


Ripples

by earthinmywindow



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthinmywindow/pseuds/earthinmywindow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Feferi Peixes, daughter of the richest woman in New York, is transferred to a new school where she gets caught up in rivalries between trust fund kids and scholarship kids. Soon both groups are pulled into a school mystery from years ago and a yearbook, given to Feferi by her cousin Meenah, may be the key to solving it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of my first Homestuck fanfiction. Now I have a lot of works in progress. Please wish me the best.
> 
> Also, no matter how much of this story I complete, I dedicate all of it to Splickedylit because she wrote an amazing Homestuck AU that started out as a gift for me, and if I can return even a portion of that honor, I would like to.

 

 

 

  
**Chapter 1**

Feferi Peixes sat hunched and sullen in the back of her mother’s limousine. Well, one of her mother’s limousines—the business maven owned half a dozen, all identical: black inside and out, climate controlled interiors awash in gray light. Except for a stony security guard, perched like a gargoyle in the shadows across from her, Feferi was all alone. But despite the surfeit of space—or, perhaps, grudgingly, because of it—she had folded her small body into a compact shape and stayed that way for the entire ride. Silence filled the remaining volume, silence and that sickly gray light. A can of Tab sweated in a cupholder, untouched.  
  
When she was a younger, smaller girl she had loved riding in limos, had relished those commutes spent scrabbling wildly over leather seats with her cousin Meenah and the two Ampora brothers, giggling and shrieking as a chaperone chided them ineffectually from behind his outspread copy of _The New York Times_. The five-year old Fef knew that when they reached their destination—a benefit gala at the museum or a charity auction at the opera house or some other dreadfully boring, grown-up place—she would have to choke back her laughter, smooth down her rumpled finery and act like the perfect, pretty doll that her mother required. But that somehow never diminished the fun and exhilaration of the trip.  
  
Two months shy of sixteen, the present Fef resented that her mother had sent the limo to bring her home. But her objections to her mother’s choice of conveyance had been as pointedly ignored as her objections to the whole business of being transferred mid-year to a new school. And so, for all its opulence, the glossy black carapace surrounding her might as well have been a police car. Just another reminder that Condesce Peixes still had inexorable control over her daughter’s life.  
  
Not that it was easy for Feferi to maintain a bad mood. It took effort. Having been reared in a Manhattan mansion, without a single material lack, she was naturally inclined towards optimism and enthusiasm and faith that things would turn out okay. Because for her they always had. True, her mother was cold, distantly controlling and almost always too busy with work to expend more than a few minutes a day on her daughter. But any dearth of maternal affection was made up for by a host of willing substitutes, friends and nannies and tutors who lavished her with reassurances and attention.  
  
The summer before she started seventh grade, Feferi had been informed by her mother that she would be going away to St. Dolarosa’s Girls School, upstate. Nervous but excited, she'd moved into the dorms and soon made friends on her own, who liked her for her energy and cheery disposition and not just for her family name. And she like them back. Save for Feferi, who was a high tier above, the girls of St. Dolarora’s were uniformly affluent. They were also, at least on the surface, uniformly prim and well-mannered—it baffled Fef to picture Meenah as a student there. This was still a very sheltered world; Feferi had not left her gilded chrysalis. But for the first time she was able to imagine a life that was her own. She was allowed to take elective courses and fell easily in love with art history. An idea of working in a museum or gallery budded in the garden of her mind. The expectation, she knew, was that she would one day take over her mother’s business empire, but while she was at St. Dolarosa’s she could pretend that she had a choice.  
  
What a stupid fool she’d been. She never had a choice. It had been an illusion, and her mother had torn it down like cheap wallpaper—though according to Condesce Peixes _all_ wallpaper was cheap.  
  
Today, Feferi felt she had every right to be in a foul mood and she was not going to waive that right.  
  
Balanced on her knees was a heavy folio-sized book, bound in dark brown calfskin leather. The words _Simon Geraint Rub Private Academie_ and a year—five past current—were embossed on the cover in gold leaf. It was Meenah’s yearbook from the one grade she’d spent at that school, delivered to her cousin via overnight courier with an attached claim that it would prove a vital resource during her transition. It was also, Fef suspected, meant to soothe away any lingering ire she might have over the role Meenah had played in getting her pulled out of St. Dolarosa’s Girls School.  
  
Feferi had indeed been mad at Meenah after seeing the YouTube video. But only briefly. She couldn’t begrudge her cousin for falling in love with another girl, especially when she had known for years that Meenah’s proclivities encompassed both the sexes. And she couldn’t begrudge her for wanting to make her love affair public. It wasn’t even Meenah’s choice to broadcast the announcement in a liquor-fueled, expletive-studded tirade over the Internet that was the problem—though Feferi, if consulted, would have advised the not-yet-twenty-one-year old against slugging from her bottle of vodka on camera.  
  
It was in her closing remarks that Meenah had delivered a direct, personalized blow to Feferi’s fate.  
  
 _“You can go ahead an’ pour yo’ fucking derision on me now, Aunt Condie. But yo’ sweet li’l Feffie is next. At St. Dollie, it’s all about th’ sapphic love and I seent th’ way th’ bitches look at her, Auntie. Won’t be long in this school till she gets in touch wi’ her inner dyke, too. An’ there ain’t no thang you can do ‘bout it.”_  
  
There was, of course, plenty that Condesce Peixes could do about it; Feferi knew this and was certain that, when sober, Meenah did too. The video had been uploaded on Christmas Day. Today was New Years Eve. In less than one week, Feferi had been excised from her idyllic, if slightly nunnish, life at St. Dolarosa’s and enrolled in an even more exclusive institution. In a testament to both the power and initiative wielded by the senior Ms. Peixes, the transplant had been orchestrated with a single two-minute phone call.  
  
Feferi tapped out the drum beat of a popular song with her fingertips on the cover of the yearbook. She was growing more anxious with each passing second. The thick clog of traffic coming into Manhattan was to be expected on New Years Eve, but in the insulated, artificial space of the limousine it almost felt like time had stopped completely. Or maybe it had just slowed down so severely that objects—the limo, the stiff security guard—were dragging through it as if through gelatin.  
  
Her eyes went down again to the yearbook. Even though it had come to her yesterday afternoon, she had yet to crack the cover. Her reasons could only be described as a hybrid of superstition and stubbornness; she didn’t want to look at the buildings and teachers that made up her new school because she didn’t want it to be her new school. Opening the yearbook was an acceptance that what was depicted on its pages was to be her life now. Already she missed St. Dolarosa’s. Missed her dorm with its flowery bed linens and gauzy pink curtains. She missed her friends and her roommate. She’d never had the sorts of experiences with them that Meenah accused her of, or had those kinds of stirrings at all, but she ached to be back in their company.  
  
The only concession that her mother had made in this forced transfer was to allow Feferi to live in the student boarding house that Simon Geraint Rub Academie maintained for special cases. She had wanted desperately to stay in the student housing—or any other place where her mother wasn’t, for that matter—but when her mother actually granted her request, Feferi got a sick feeling in her stomach. Condesce Peixes did not do favors or acts of kindness, even for her own child. Every decision she made was designed solely for her own benefit.  
  
For the past ten minutes, the limo hadn’t budged. At least she didn’t think it had; it was hard to tell with how smoothly it handled. This was ridiculous! They were on the Upper West Side, nowhere near Time’s Square!  
  
As an emergency alternative to tearing out her own hair, Feferi at last relented and lifted the cover of the yearbook. Her eyes were met with a cloud of graffiti-like handwriting in fuscia sharpie. Meenah’s, more articulate—and less profane—in writing than she was when speaking.  
  
 _Cuz,_  
 _I know you think your life is gonna suck at SGRUB. But it’s not. Just trust me on this one. Believe me, I was pissed when your mom booted my ass out of there. I did you a favor and got you booted in. Maybe you can finish what we began._  
  
That last line was crossed out, but poorly, so Fef could still read it easily. She wondered, briefly, if she was meant to. There was a break in the annotation to accommodate the yearbook’s colophon, but it continued below.  
  
 _I hear she’s letting you live in the boarding house. Fin-tastic! I was only there a year but fuck do I miss the place. Take it in, Fef. Take it all in. (pg. 108)_  
  
Feferi’s lips curled into smile, betraying her resignation to grumpiness. It was the word fin-tastic that did it; after all these years, Meenah still kept their inside joke going and used terrible fish puns. Her curiosity was piqued by the message, which was deliberately abstruse in its wording. She flipped to the referenced page, catching brief glimpses of more writing—a lot of it—in the margins and gutters of pages she passed. It didn’t all look like Meenah’s hand, but she would have time to investigate later.  
  
Page 108 was part of a spread (with page 109) showcasing “Life in New York City.” An array of color photographs depicted well-groomed teenagers, smiling photogenically as they engaged in both leisurely and charitable pursuits in various New York locales. There was the cluster of volunteers in custom screen-printed tees spearing trash on sticks in Central Park. A boy and girl waved from the side of a boat as the Statue of Liberty stretched her arm to the sky behind them. Except for their expensive clothes—which Fef only recognized because she wore the same designers—these kids were indistinguishable from those of humbler means.  
  
The thought that attending this school might not be as terrible as she feared arose in Feferi’s mind but she quickly smothered it. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to be excited about this yet.  
  
There were short descriptions typed under each photo, but very little supplemental handwritten information. In fact, there was only a single scrawl of fuscia on the entire spread. It was wrapped around a small, bland photo on page 108 of a brownstone apartment building with a tiny, neat courtyard in the front surrounded by a pointy iron fence. The official caption was a single sentence: _A school-owned boarding house accommodates students with special housing needs as well as scholarship students from further afield._  
  
Meenah’s only addition was an address. An Upper West Side address.  
  
A fresh current of excitement bubbled up from Feferi belly, this time too strong to quash. She was so close to the place that would be her new home. Needing to know exactly how close, she retrieved her iPhone and tapped on the map icon. The phone’s GPS showed that she was less than two blocks away and as soon as she knew that, she couldn’t wait any longer. But how could she extricate herself from the limousine when there was a security guard present?  
  
The only option was charm. “Excuse me,” she said in a sweetened voice.  
  
The security guard started, snorted, his sunglasses sliding down his nose. “What was that?” He blinked dazed blue eyes at her; it was obvious that he’d been asleep and she’d woken him up. “Is there a problem, Miss Feferi?”  
  
She found herself unable to answer right away because she was caught in her own moment of surprise. Why hadn’t she recognized him before? The guard who’d been assigned to escort her today was the same one who had supervised almost all of those childhood limo rides. Wryly, she remembered something she’d overheard her favorite grouchy cook say years ago: “When you serve the Peixes family, it is a lifetime gig.”  
  
“Tony,” she said, grateful that his name came back to her so effortlessly. “The traffic is ridiculous on New Years Eve in Manhattan and since we are just two blocks from the school boarding house, I thought it would be easier if I just got out here and walked the rest of the way. Otherwise who knows how long it’ll take?” She’d tried to put just the right amount of pleading into her voice but was unsure about the effect and chewed her lower lip nervously as she watched Tony’s face.  
  
“Nice try, Miss Feferi,” he said, leveling her a stern but not unfriendly look. “But my instructions are to take you to see the principal of your new school first thing.”  
  
“The principal?” Her face screwed up in confusion and disappointment. “The principal is available for meeting on New Year’s Eve? Seriously?”  
  
Tony sighed. It was a sympathetic sort of sigh, going by his expression, as if he too were baffled by the instructions but had no choice but to follow them. “Your mother has made special arrangements with Dr. Scratch.”  
  
The name Dr. Scratch made Feferi think of Old Scratch, which was an archaic name for the Devil. A small shudder feathered up her arms. That couldn’t be a good omen.  
  
“I promise I’ll come right back to the limo,” she said, returning to her request. “Or, better yet, I will meet you there. It can’t be far from the boarding house. Pleeeeeeaaaase, Tony?” With childlike earnest, she leaned towards him, stretching her grin as wide as she could and knowing it made her look just slightly crazed.  
  
Barely perceptible twitches of discomfort in his shoulders indicated that his resolve was weakening. This turned quickly to visible squirming under the harsh beam of her smile and a few seconds later, he relented and said, “Well...”  
  
“You know I wouldn’t lie to you, Tony,” she said when he hesitated. She let out a heavy, stagy sigh. “I just need to see where I’m going to live since I’ve been torn away from my only friends.” Yes, she thought, I’m playing on his sympathies, but these are special circumstances.  
  
Tony bowed his head in defeat, took off his sunglasses with one hand and massaged the bridged of his nose with the thumb and forefinger of the other. “Alright,” he said. “Do you have the address of the school?” Fef nodded. “Good, because your mother gave me Dr. Scratch’s phone number. I will call him in half an hour and if you aren’t in his office when I do, you will be in deep trouble.”  
  
The grin returned to Feferi’s face at full brightness. “Oh thank you, Tony!” she cried, overly joyful. “And I promise I won’t let my mother find out that you neglected your duties!”  
  
Tony’s jaw slackened, but before he could utter a response, Feferi had bounced from her seat and was giving him an energetic squeeze. She grabbed her jacket from the floor and tucked the yearbook under her arm and with a surge of vigor, exited the limo.  
  
New York City hit Fef’s senses like a wave. An aggressively cold wind knifed across her face and filled her nostrils with a familiar melange of smells—exhaust, rotting leaves, and garbage, with a faint, distant trace of cheap street vendor hot dogs. The sky was a blotchy gray and there were scattered humps of old, gritty snow on the sidewalk. A car horn honked vociferously and others soon joined in a chorus. All of it filled Feferi with excitement, which she’d abandoned trying to suppress. In the past two and a half years, she had established in her mind that St. Dolarosa’s was her home, but in some deeper part of her—her heart or her soul or her genetic code—she would always be a New Yorker.  
  
She negotiated her coat onto her body as she walked, juggling the yearbook between her arms in order to accomplish it. By the time she got it on and buttoned, she’d reached her destination.  
  
The actual building looked much as it had in the photograph, only now Fef could pick out all the small details that were lost during pixelation and resizing. It was a beautiful sight and for a full minute she just looked at it from the sidewalk, following Meenah’s advice to “take it all in.” Recently she’d developed the habit of searching for favorite artists’ touches in the settings of her life. The dorm at St. Dolarosa’s had been dappled and pastel, all Monet and Fragonard. This place was wilder, the overgrown garden like a miniature Henri Rousseau painting. Stalactites of ice dripped from windowsills like Chihuly sculptures and the dark ivy snaking up the brownstone facade was pure art nouveau.  
  
Feferi’s heart thumped in her throat as she took the steps up to the door. The stoop was daubed with pigeon guano, some of it old and dried and some still shiny wet. Ah, she thought in delight, Jackson Pollock! A plaque on the door proclaimed the apartment _Beatrix E. Forus Hall_. Whoever that was. A contemporary of Mr. Rub perhaps?  
  
There was a button next to the door, which Feferi pressed. She heard a melodic chime resonate from somewhere inside the building and held her breath as she waited for a response. Waited. Waited. Nothing. She had to stop and draw air. Maybe nobody was home because it was a holiday. Not ready to give up just yet, she tried knocking on the door. On the third rap it swung open and buttery light spilled out around the pale, petulant face of a teenaged boy.  
  
“What do you want?” the boy asked. His voice was an ursine grumble.  
  
Feferi blinked dumbly at him, unable to form a proper greeting in the presence of such a severe scowl. “Um...” she said.  
  
He was short for a boy—just a few inches taller than Fef, who was short for a girl—with brown hair, rucked up like a disheveled nest on his head, and pewter gray eyes, hooded under bruised lids.  
  
“Well?” he said, flicking drops of spittle onto Feferi’s face.  
  
She flinched, just a little, before finally speaking. “I’m a new transfer student to Simon, uh, Garrett, was it? Rub Academy. I’m going to be living in this apartment starting today.”  
  
The boy folded his arms in front of his chest and leaned threateningly towards her, glaring. He was dressed prosaically, in a black turtleneck sweater and gray jeans and bore little resemblance to the students in the yearbook, though that may have been because they had all been smiling. “Do you actually expect me to believe that load of triple-distilled bullshit?” he asked contemptuously. “You know, we aren’t as stupid as she told you. I mean, she must’ve told you we were borderline braindead if you thought this rinky-fucking-dink ploy would work.” His tone grew more belligerent the longer he spoke and soon he had unfolded his arms and was gesticulating furiously. “We actually had to take a test to get into this fucking school! She knows that! Or is this some sort of mind-fucking psyche-out? Is that it? How much is she paying you?”  
  
“Um...” Feferi said again. She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about and told him, “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Nobody is paying me.”  
  
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? So the name Vriska Serket doesn’t mean anything to you?”  
  
“Who? No. Like I said, I’m a new transfer student. My name is Feferi Peixes.”  
  
Upon hearing this, the boy let out a burst of sardonic laughter. “Very funny. You can go back and tell Vriska that if she wants to send over a fake scholarship student— mid-fucking-year no less—she’d be wise not to pick the name of the filthiest stinkingest richest wickedest bitch in the country.”  
  
His hand was already braced on the door, ready to slam it in her face, but still she protested. Or tried to. “Wait! I never said I was a scholarship student!”  
  
“Then you don’t belong here.” And with that as his final statement, he swung the door closed.  
  
Feferi stood there in a daze for several seconds, trying to wrap her head around what had just occurred. Her phone emitted a musical alarm from the safety of her pocket to let her know that she had ten minutes left before she was due at Dr. Scratch’s office. Sighing, she turned around and descended the stairs. When she’d reached the bottom and taken a few steps further, a voice called out from behind her.  
  
“Wait up!”  
  
It wasn’t the angry boy from before; it was a female voice and when Feferi turned she saw a young woman bouncing on bare feet down the steps. “Hello?” Fef said curiously.  
  
The girl smiled apologetically. She was quite pretty, built in the Tamara de Lempicka mold, with soft curves and tapering limbs. Her coloring was strikingly similar to Feferi’s—the same almost-but-not-quite-black hair, the same nut brown skin—but her eyes were much darker, and almond shaped, hinting strongly at Asian parentage or gradparentage. Her hair fell over her shoulders and down her back in voluminous curls, which Feferi realized were not completely natural when she noticed two yellow plastic curlers that had been left in. But the girl didn’t seem bothered by the half-done state of her hair. The curlers were vaguely reminiscent of ram’s horns and lent her the air of a pastoral pagan deity.  
  
Feferi was entranced.  
  
“I’m so sorry about what happened back there,” the girl said. “Please don’t let Karkat color your opinion of us scholarship kids. We’re not all like that, really. In fact, he’s not usually like that. Well, he is, but... Oh!” She appeared to have a sudden realization. “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Aradia Megido. Nice to meet you.”  
  
“Feferi Peixes,” Fef said, her buoyancy returning. “So you and that guy, Krabcatch, you’re S.G.Rub students, right? I knew I had the right place!”  
  
Aradia pursed her lips, which were the color of red wine. “Well, you are right and... not right. We are Sgrub students.” She said it as a single syllable, a homophone of the word scrub. “But Beforus Hall is for scholarship students only. As you are matriculating mid-year and your name is Peixes...”  
  
“You’re right, I’m not a scholarship student,” Fef said before any discussion of her family could be launched. “But I’m supposed to stay in the boarding house. I was given this address.” Anxiety was starting to worm its way into her voice.  
  
Aradia, as if sensing Feferi’s growing unease, flashed a kind smile. “It was an honest mistake. The boarding house for non-scholarship students is right behind Beforus. Anyone could get them mixed up.”  
  
At this, Feferi brightened. “Really? Thank you, Miss Aradia. You’ve been very helpful.”  
  
“No Miss. Just Aradia.”  
  
“Sorry, just Aradia.” Fef couldn’t help beaming as she spoke, too excited to put on a more dignified facade. Could this be her first friend at her new school? “I wish I could go and see where I’ll be staying, but I have an appointment to keep. Please, just tell me: are my roommates nice?”  
  
“We~ell” Aradia stretched the word out to buy her time for deliberation. “I do not know most of them too well. Except for Terezi. She is a good friend, and her older sister acts as a guardian for both boarding houses. The others are a bit strange—one of them is always staring at me and sweating profusely, thinks I haven’t noticed but of course I have—but they are more or less decent kids. The only one you need to watch out for is Vriska Serket. She’s trouble.”  
  
Feferi’s smile remained in place, but the edges quivered. “Trouble?” she asked.  
  
“Oh nothing to get too scared about,” Aradia said in a reassuring tone. “Latula keeps things from getting too out of hand. Just be careful around her. Okay?”  
  
“Right,” Fef answered, bobbing her head.  
  
Aradia grinned. “Good. You look like you can hold your own, Feferi.” She paused. “Say, I know you have to get going now, but if you don’t have any plans for later this evening, would you like to go to a party?”  
  
“A party?” Feferi felt a delicious rush of bubbles go through her.  
  
Aradia waved a red-taloned hand in an insouciant manner, as if this weren’t a momentous offer. “A group of us scholarship kids are going, but I am quite sure that Karkat has already asked Terezi so I see no reason anyone should be upset at my inviting you. Oh, but you probably have some big, high-class...”  
  
“I want to go!” Feferi interrupted, more eagerly than she’d intended. “I don’t have  any plans tonight. Just tell me where to go and when. Put it in a note in my phone.” She retrieved her iPhone from her pocket and thrust it towards Aradia.  
  
Looking mildly bemused by the unbridled show of enthusiasm, Aradia thumbed the information into Feferi’s phone. When she handed it back, her face was serene. “It was very nice to meet you, Feferi Peixes. Be yourself and you are sure to make more friends at Sgrub.”  
  
It took all of Fef’s self-control not to drop the yearbook and throw her arms around Aradia. “Thank you,” she said, her voice almost cracking from all the joy it held. “I glub it.”  
  
“Glub? What’s glub?”  
  
Feferi’s face went hot. In her elation she’d let a glub slip out. “Glub is... I’ll tell you about it some other time. I have to go now, Aradia. Thank you. For everything.”  
  
As she walked briskly in the direction of her new school, Feferi’s phone chimed again to let her know that her time was up. She was going to be late meeting Dr. Scratch, but she didn’t care in the least. She’d made a friend, before classes had even started, and she was invited to a party. Her heart was thumping so wildly she thought it might burst from her chest and she hugged Meenah’s yearbook to her like a shield.  
  
To be continued


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter. This story is starting a little slowly, but things will get rolling soon. There are a lot of details and characters to establish. Like the first chapter, this one is from Fef's POV, but the whole story will not follow that pattern.

 

**Chapter 2**

The rapid little clicks of shoes on marble echoed in the empty hallway and interlaced the beats of Feferi’s heart as she navigated Simon Geraint Rub Academie. A vision of the Devil loomed out of the dark recesses of her brain. It wasn’t fair, she knew, but with only the name Dr. Scratch to build upon, her imagination conjured up an archetypal villain. She pictured him dressed all in black, angular and darkly handsome, a man possessed of the kind of effortless, perfidious charm that wins him earthly success as it corrodes his soul.  
  
 _He’s a good man with an evil name_ , she thought to herself. _It’s not his fault._  
  
That reasoning, however sound, did little to stem the rising tide of dread in her belly, and when she opened the door to his office it broke over her in a crest of shock. The principal—enthroned behind a massive mahogany desk—did indeed look sinister, but not in the way Feferi had anticipated: Dr. Scratch was an albino.  
  
Feferi had never seen a person with albinism in real life, only in photographs in biology textbooks, and she was not prepared for the visual punch of so much white. His skin, his scraped back hair, even his eyebrows and eyelashes, were all as pale as plaster. He looked like a cave fish or an extraterrestrial. Feferi struggled to look at him in a natural manner, compelled instead to stare and avert her eyes and stare again.  
  
 _He’s a good man with an evil name who happens to be an albino,_ she forced herself to think.  
  
He was talking on a cell phone when she entered, and Feferi could tell that it was Tony on the other end because Scratch said, in a voice as smooth as sin, “Actually, she just arrived, so you need not further worry, dear Anthony.” He ended the call and turned his attention to Fef, flashing her an unctuous smile and gesturing to an empty chair facing his desk. “Ah, Miss Peixes, do sit down. How nice of you to finally show up.”  
  
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, looking down as she sank into the chair. The emphasis he’d put on certain words— _nice, finally_ —was subtle, just enough to unsettle her.  
  
 _Good man. Evil name. Albino. Evil voice. Good man._  
  
“Your mother did not tell me that you were such a shy thing,” he drawled—emphasis on _thing_. “But then, we only spoke briefly. You will not be penalized for your tardiness, dear, so there is no need to hang your head. Now, let me have a look at you.”  
  
She didn’t want to accede to his request—something about his tone made it sound salacious, even though it was, in all likelihood, perfectly innocent. At the same time, she didn’t want to appear frightened of him, though some part of her undeniably was. Marshaling her courage with a deep breath, she lifted her gaze to meet his.  
  
He regarded her with pale dispassionate eyes and his thin, snakelike lips curled into a patronizing smile. “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”  
  
“No Sir,” she said. She wanted to look away again but couldn’t let herself. Since she had to get accustomed to the sight of him anyways, she might as well start now.  
  
He wore a pure white seersucker suit that made his coloration even more conspicuous; if not for an acidic green bow-tie, he would look like he’d been carved—man and clothes—from an enormous tusk of ivory. Could anyone really get accustomed to the sight of this man? It was a spiteful thought, and Feferi would have spent a second or two feeling guilty over having it if Scratch hadn’t immediately launched into a speech.  
  
“As I’m sure you’re well aware, Miss Peixes, Simon Geraint Rub Academie is a very prestigious school. Not only are our students held to the highest academic standards in the country, but also to rigorous standards of conduct and social propriety. The student body is small and very exclusive. With the exception of our six scholarship students, every child comes from a well-to-to family with a reputation to uphold. Don’t you agree that reputation is important, Miss Peixes?”  
  
She bobbed her head and answered mechanically. “Yes, Sir.”  
  
His smile spread like warm butter. “That is what I like to hear. And such a polite young lady. Not at all like that vulgar cousin of yours. But I guess Meenah is the perfect cautionary tale of what happens when a student at this school chooses to engage in unacceptable behavior. That is why she had to be removed, after all. And she was merely Condesce Peixes niece. I can only imagine what that woman would do if her own daughter were to flaunt the rules. But you are a good girl, aren’t you, Feferi?”  
  
The sound of her first name sliding off his tongue sent a cold shudder down the groove of her back. She simply said, “I am,” and tightened her arms around her abdomen. Her fingers found the hard, square edges of the yearbook through the wool of her jacket and she felt mollified. And glad she’d hidden it there—her motive had been to avoid looking like an ingenue, but upon hearing Scratch speak of her cousin so contemptuously, Feferi felt a flare of protectiveness for the object.  
  
“Of course you are,” Scratch said with a discomfiting touch of mirth. “You, Miss Peixes, are a thoroughbred. The best of the best.” He paused and stroked his chin where a small, pointed beard the same color as his skin grew. “You are still intent on living in the boarding house I take it?”  
  
“That’s right,” said Feferi. She had come with multiple questions about the two boarding houses but decided that Dr. Scratch was not the person she wanted to ask. “Is there a problem with that?”  
  
“None at all. Not now that the scholarship students are housed separately.” He cast her an obliging smile. “Oh, I know that they are good children and diligent scholars. They wouldn’t be at the Academie if they weren’t. But one cannot disregard their more humble upbringings, especially when compared to your distinguished background, Miss Peixes. No, the residents of Forus Hall would not be appropriate companions for a Peixes. But you shouldn’t have any trouble making friends of your own kind. Miss Vriska Serket is a delightful young woman, I hear.”  
  
Feferi didn’t like the way he said _own kind_ , as if the non-wealthy were members of a more primitive genus, taxonomically incompatible. And the fact that he had recommended as a friend the one girl that Aradia had warned about did little to endear him; Fef’s interactions with each of them had been brief, her gut told her that Aradia was the more trustworthy of the two.  
  
She kept her response to Scratch short and cool: “I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
The principal flapped a manicured hand in the air, as if to speed the conversation on to its conclusion. “Yes, yes. By next week, I’ll bet you and Miss Serket will be thick as thieves,” he said. “Now, I am sure you are eager to get out of here and start preparing for your dear mother’s New Years Eve party. The social event of the season. Or so I have heard.”  
  
This year, for the first time in her life, Feferi did not plan to attend her mother’s party, but as she was already on tenterhooks waiting to be released from this meeting, she saw no need to mention it. “Oh, it absolutely is. Party of the year. And you’re right, I really should get going. So I can get ready.”  
  
“Well then, all that remains is for me to give you your schedule of classes and you can be on your merry little way.” As he said this, Scratch pulled open a desk drawer and retrieved a sheet of paper, which he slid across the desk with his fingertips. “I think you will be quite pleased with your courses.”  
  
Feferi felt a tingle of excitement despite her present company and reached greedily for her schedule. It was printed on creamy card stock. The font was curly and in green ink and took some effort to decipher, but when Fef did, her heart sank. “Excuse me, I think there’s been a mistake.” At least she hoped it was a mistake.  
  
“You think?” Scratch asked, lifting a snow white eyebrow.  
  
“I was taking Art History at my old school,” Fef said. “And AP Biology. And AP Literature. This schedule has Economics and Business Administration. I’ve never taken those classes before. And this math is way too advanced for where I am.”  
  
Scratch tutted softly. “There has been no mistake, Miss Peixes. These are the classes your mother selected for you. She believes it is time for you to put aside your youthful frivolity and really start to focus on your future.” He puckered his face in an overdone expression of sympathy. “Oh, but you’re such a smart girl, you’ll catch up to your peers in no time.”  
  
She opened her mouth to object and closed it again, without uttering a word, as she realized that it would be an exercise in futility. Condesce Peixes always got what she wanted and any attempts to fight her would only make the fighter’s life worse, even if it was her own daughter. “Perhaps a tutor can be arranged,” was what Feferi finally said.  
  
“An excellent idea,” said Scratch, accepting it as a statement of surrender. “I shall see what I can come up with. Now, off you go, young lady. To celebrate the start of a New Year with your people. I have grand expectations for you here at Simon Geraint Rub Academie. Just remember to always do your best. Do right by your family. And consider your position in society before you make decisions.”  
  
A long stream of breath left Fef’s lungs as she stood up to leave, like tension exiting through a release valve that had been opened at last. She had to hug her midsection to make sure the concealed yearbook was stashed securely, but she managed to make it look more or less natural. “Thank you, again, for meeting with me, Dr. Scratch,” she said, giving him a quick, shallow bow of the head. “And Happy New Year.” Then, with her disagreeable schedule in one hand, she stepped to the door. The moment her other hand touched the knob, Scratch’s voice, soft and malevolent, addressed her one final time.  
  
“One more thing, Miss Peixes,” he said. She didn’t look back or turn the doorknob, just froze there, pulse quickening. “There is no need for you to have hidden that yearbook under your jacket. It is not a crime to keep such a thing.” He paused, but Feferi knew that more was coming and held her breath. “But if you try to keep secrets from me,” he said, “while you are attending my school... Well, that I am afraid might be a problem. Remember your place, Feferi Peixes.”  
  
Chilled air hit the mask of perspiration on Feferi’s face like a wake up slap and she gasped as she burst back into open Manhattan. She hadn’t been able to form a response to Scratch’s warning and had gotten out of his office and out of the school as quickly as she could without flat out sprinting for the exit.  
  
Whatever the inner working of his mind might be, Scratch terrified Feferi down to the marrow. Not that receiving the news of her new curriculum could ever have been a pleasant scene. But having it delivered by that man—that surreal porcelain effigy of a man—with his sinuous voice and impenetrable smile, had been almost unbearable.  
  
She had been so intimidated that she’d forgotten to ask if she would be allowed on the school swim team. Or if the school even had a swim team. Oh well. She was sure she would find out one way or another very soon.  
  
As she picked her way back to the boarding where she would live, behind the boarding house where she had thought she would live, a funny—though not uncommon—thing happened. Feferi’s spirit started to lift, like a jellyfish pushing towards the ocean’s sunlit surface in little puffs. Thoughts of Dr. Scratch and calculus were quickly displaced by thoughts of Aradia and the party.  
  
She had no preset expectations for the event; most of the parties she had attended in her young life had been overblown PR receptions for her mother where she’d had to play the role of perfect daughter. Or prissy cotillions with white gloves and miniaturized, flavorless refreshments that wouldn’t stain them. Oh, there had been a few dorm room get-togethers at St. Dolarosa’s, but those were never anything wilder than five or six teenage girls sharing a bottle peppermint schnapps that one of them had smuggled in after her last visit home, and it always devolved into fervent discussion of how awful or awesome it was that there were no boys around.  
  
This would be Feferi’s first real teenage party. She might have been embarrassed by that fact if she weren’t so excited. But it wasn’t just the party she was excited about, it was Aradia Megido, beautiful, lithe, and radiant. After just a few minutes of exposure to the girl, Feferi felt drawn to her like a plant to sunlight. She’d never felt such longing for another girl’s friendship before. It was a platonic infatuation, but an infatuation nonetheless.  
  
 _I hope we can become good friends,_ she thought. Very good friend. _Maybe even—dare I dream it?—best friends. Oh, but someone like Aradia probably already has a best friend._  
  
A needle of guilt lanced her heart. Hadn’t she promised Eridan Ampora when they were five years old that he would be her best friend forever? It had been weeks since they’d spoken, and longer since they’d seen each other, but it still felt like a betrayal that she’d entertained the idea of another best friend.  
  
 _Perhaps Aradia and I could be second-best friends._  
  
That thought forced her to acknowledge just how silly this whole line of thinking was and she laughed out loud. Ranking your friends? Feferi was too old for that elementary school mentality. She could have as many best friends as she wanted! Aradia and Eridan, probably not Vriska, but perhaps Terezi. With a positive attitude she might even be able to win over that cranky kid, Karkrab.  
  
If it weren’t for the cumbersome burden of the yearbook, she would skipped the rest of the way to the boarding house, buoyed by thoughts of all the best friends she would soon have.  
  
The limousine was pulled up to the curb when she arrived, Tony standing next to it on the sidewalk with crossed arms and a particularly dour expression. “You were late to your meeting with the principal, Miss Feferi,” he grumbled.  
  
Fef tried to look apologetic but couldn’t fully repress her excitement and it wound up a sort of goofy simper instead. “Sorry, Tony. Dr. Scratch wasn’t mad at me so it turned out okay in the end.” Well, depending on your definition of okay. “Won’t happen again.”  
  
“Yes it will,” he said, but he didn’t sound angry. It was closer to affectionate exasperation. “Your bags are already inside. But I couldn’t leave until I saw with my own eyes that you were safely home.”  
  
“Here I am,” she said, beaming. “I’m home.” The words sent a delicious burst of warmth through her chest. She was home.  
  
“Then you’ll be needing your key.” Tony held out the key on its little chain for her and it looked rather dainty dangling from his chunky fingers like a silver charm.  
  
Feferi curled her fingers around the key and pressed the fist to the center of her chest. She said nothing.  
  
“Well then, if you don’t need anything else...” Tony rubbed the back of his thick neck with a coarse hand. It was amusing to see his austere bearing start to warp a little. “I guess I will sent word along to your mother that you are settled and I’ll get out of your hair.”  
  
Fef took the opportunity to further disrupt his composure and threw her arms around his broad midsection. “Thanks for everything, Tony,” she said as she hugged him. “Don’t worry, I have your number just in case.”  
  
Tony squirmed awkwardly until she released him. “Er, yes. Good,” he said. “Be, uh, safe and, you know, good. And smart.”  
  
“You know I will,” she replied, opening the limo door for him.  
  
When the limousine had peeled away, Feferi turned to her real new home. The townhouse for non-scholarship boarders was gray limestone. It was a newer and grander structure than B.E.Borus Hall, but it was somehow lacking in character when compared to the brownstone. The rectangular facade was almost the same color as the sky and low-hanging haze blurred the edges between the two so the overall affect was that of a Mark Rothko composition. Gray on Gray in oils. But in time, Feferi was certain that she would come to find this the most charming building in all of Manhattan.  
  
There were only four steps up to the door and she took them in two strides. The stone lintel above the door had a single word carved into it: ALTERNIA. Whatever that meant. She put her key in the lock, turned it, and pushed in the door.  
  
“Hello?” she called as she stepped into an empty receiving hall. “Anybody home?” The light above her head cast a cone of grainy light in the otherwise dim house. Since there’d been no response to her greeting on this level, she decided to explore a bit and find her bedroom.  
  
A placard fixed to the wall near the stairs explained the layout of the house—Alternia—in simple terms:  
  
    1st Floor - Kitchen and Dining  
    2nd Floor - Recreational Rooms  
    3rd Floor - Girls’ Dorms  
    4th Floor - Boys’ Dorms  
  
Feferi made her way up to the third floor where the stairs let out into a short hall that opened, after a few feet, into a den-like atrium. This was clearly a communal space; a couch and matching chairs, all upholstered in dark magenta velvet, were positioned around an enormous wall-mounted flatscreen television. There was also a refrigerator and cupboards in one corner, along with a granite countertop surrounded by four tall barstools.  
  
 _So adult!_ Fef thought excitedly.  
  
She saw three doors leading from this room, two closed and one opened. Peering into the opened door, she saw her Louis Vuitton luggage, neatly stacked. Ah, her room. Then the other two door must belong to Terezi and Vriska. Were there really only two other girls living here?  
  
The bedroom was impressive both in its size and its furnishings. A full size canopy bed, complete with gauzy draperies, occupied a central position. There was a large bookcase against one wall, already stocked with textbooks for her new classes as well as some strange additional titles— _Ruthless Leadership, Alone at the Top, Maintaining a Business Empire_ —which had obviously been chosen by her mother. A wooden desk rounded out the set and placed on top of it was a glass bowl containing a single beta fish, its plummy purple fins fluttering like crinoline in the clear water. It reminded her of Eridan for some reason.  
  
Her one point of contention with the bedroom’s decor was the selection of posters, framed and mounted on the walls. They were those obnoxious, ostensibly inspirational posters that pair hackneyed slogans about corporate virtues with stock photographs of nature. Condesce Peixes had no love for such mass-produced pap, just as she had no love for books that purported to teach leadership, but she did take joy in reminding her daughter of her impending destiny. The posters and the books were just more of the fine details of a lifelong mind game.  
  
Sometime during the next week, Feferi would visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and would pick up some reproductions of masterpieces to replace the four eyesores. In the meantime, she at least had a large window she could look out while at her desk. From it she had a clear view of the back of Forus Hall. She couldn’t fathom why her mother had arranged for her to have such a vista, unless it was supposed to nurture contempt for those less affluent. If that was the plan, it was a poorly conceived one; all Feferi felt when she looked across to the other building was adoration and longing.  
  
She looked down and saw that the patch of land between B.E.Forus and ALTERNIA, though narrow, was overgrown with weeds and dense brambles. It looked like nobody had tended it in years. Even though they were both students at the same school, there was a wilderness between Feferi Peixes and Aradia Megido.  
  
That was the message that Condesce wanted her daughter absorb every time she looked out her window.  
  
Feferi checked the time on her phone. She had about an hour before she had to leave for the party but she wasn’t in the mood to waste it unpacking. That could wait until tomorrow. She tossed her coat on the bed and secreted Meenah’s yearbook under the pillows and was about to go see if anyone else was home when her phone vibrated. It was an incoming call from Eridan.  
  
“Hey Eri,” she said around an inexplicable bubble in her throat. There was no reason for her to be flustered talking to Eridan, but she felt a rush of nervous excitement to be doing so knowing he was just a short cab ride away from her now.  
  
“Hey Fef.” He spoke into the phone sotto voce. “Where are you?”  
  
She could hear the muffled sounds of high class revelry—cocktail glasses clinking, grand piano music, droll laughter—leaking around her friend’s familiar voice and knew exactly where he was. “I’m in my new room,” she said. “At the boarding house. You’re at my mother’s party?”  
  
“You know I don’t exactly have a choice,” he said with a hint of disdain. “I have to attend as a representative of the Ampora Family. Since my brother made certain questionable life choices. Namely, his choice to completely fuck up his life without any consideration for mine. So I also have to attend in case the piece of shit chooses to crash the party and I need to do damage control.”  
  
“Yeah, I am sorry about Cronus,” Fef said. “Poor guy.” She knew that Eridan didn’t despise those upper crust soirees as much as she did—he was ridiculously proud of his high standing in society—but she felt bad about everything that had happened with his brother.  
  
Eridan grunted. “Don’t be sorry. Nobody made the asshole become a junkie. He’s an embarrassment and that’s all. And speaking of embarrassments, Fef, I feel it is my duty to warn you about that school you’ve enrolled in. Simon Geraint Rub may be prestigious, but you should know they let in commoners. Kids from Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx with no money and no connections.”  
  
“Yeah, but they have the top test scores in the city,” she said. “They’re krill-iant!”  
  
From the other end of the phone came the unmistakable sound of Eridan’s palm connecting with his forehead. “Don’t think you can butter me up with fish puns, Fef. That only works on your cousin.”  
  
“Oh, don’t be such a grumpy gills, Eri,” she said. “The scholarship students earned their spots at the school. All you’d have to do is ask your dad. Then we’d go to the same school.”  
  
“Feh. I don’t want to go to that peasant school,” he snorted. “I just want to make sure you’re okay there.”  
  
“I’m fine, Eri.”  
  
“And you’re sure you won’t be making an appearance at the party tonight?” There was a note of hope in his voice and Feferi hated to extinguish it.  
  
“Sorry. I’m just not feeling up to it. I think I’ll just stay in tonight, unpack my bags and look through my new textbooks.” If she told him the truth, that she would be ringing in the New Year with those kids he called peasants, she would undoubtedly have to endure a lengthy polemic about the company she was keeping. The lie was much easier.  
  
“I can’t say your absence won’t be felt,” he said, voice faintly tinged with disappointment. “But I won’t try to guilt trip you. And Fef?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I’m, uh, glad that you’re back in the city. You belong here.”  
  
A ball of warmth nestled behind Feferi’s breastbone. “Thanks, Eri. I’m glad to be back, too. Thank you for the fish.”  
  
“It was nothing,” he said, biting off the words awkwardly. “I just wanted to make sure you had one friend who is worthy of you in that place.”  
  
Feferi sighed, but there was fondness in it. This was about as tolerant as Eridan got so she didn’t bother to correct him. “I’ll take good care of him,” she said. “And I’ll talk to you again soon. Have a good night, Eri. And a Happy New Year.”  
  
He made a nasal sound of indeterminate meaning. “Nnn. Happy New Year, Fef.”  
  
She closed the call feeling uplifted but lonely. She hadn’t realized how much she missed her best friend until she’d heard his voice again. But maybe that girl Terezi was around and she could work on a forging a new friendship. Determined to do just that, she left her bedroom and closed the door behind her.  
  
Of the two other doors leading off of the girls’ common room, one was blank and one had a paper sign on it, attached with colorful pushpins. KEEP OUT it read across the top. Below that was a drawing of a brilliant teal dragon with blazing red eyes. VRISKA SERKET it read across the bottom. This was the notorious Vriska’s bedroom. Process of elimination determined that the blank door must be Terezi’s. Good. No guess work required.  
  
Fef pranced over, put on a friend-making smile, and rapped her knuckles on the hardwood.  
  
“What?” a surly voice called from within.  
  
“I’m Feferi Peixes. I’m new. I’m here to introduce myself.”  
  
There was a groan from within followed by a string indecipherable muttering. The only thing Feferi made out was, “I’m coming so don’t get your panties in a twist.”  
  
The door opened partway to reveal a tall, lanky girl leaning against the frame. Her toasted tan skin and shaggy, sun-bleached hair were an odd look for late December in New York City, but for all Fef knew, she’d just come back from a holiday at the beach. If her parents could afford to send her to S.G.Rub without a scholarship, they could afford an island getaway.  
  
More striking than classically beautiful, the girl had a narrow face with sharp features: a long straight nose like the blade of a hatchet, a pointed, witchy chin, deep-set eyes that sparkled cerulean behind her simple wire-framed glasses. Her limbs were long and spidery and she wore a t-shirt and flannel jacket over skinny jeans that hugged her small, square hips.  
  
“So you’re the new meat,” she said flatly as she appraised Feferi from head to toe.  
  
“Y-yes,” Fef said, stuttering under the effect of a predatory aura wafting off of this girl. “I’m Feferi Peixes. And you must be Terezi. This is embarrassing, but I-I’m afraid Aradia didn’t give me your last name.” She thrust out her hand for a shake, hoping the last name would be offered in return.  
  
For a fraction of a second, a moment so short Fef wasn’t certain if she’d actually seen it, the girl looked confused. But then her lips spread out in wide rictus revealing a fang-like pair of canine teeth. “That’s right,” the girl said, grabbing Fef’s hand and jerking it roughly up and down. “I’m Terezi Pyrope. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Feferi Peixes.”

To be continued


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all who have read this far. I hope you won't be too discouraged by the slow start (and my slow writing). This story is rather large inside my head and there are a lot of characters to introduce and background to lay down. I will do my best to get it written. This chapter is from Vriska's POV and is very much an establishing chapter for her character. Next time will be back to Fef and more will start to happen.

 

**Chapter 3**

So this was the Peixes heiress. The Fish Girl. Vriska was unimpressed. It was not a matter of beauty. The girl had a pretty face—her cheeks were high and girlishly round, her nose small, with a delicate upcurve, her eyes were large and long-lashed and luminous burgundy brown, limned by the sugar pink frames of her stylish glasses. She wore little makeup, just a bit of coral colored eye shadow and lip gloss, but her skin was clear and smooth, the color of a pecan shell. A white plastic headband pushed back a silken mass of dark curls and directed it into a dripping waterfall behind her, the longest tendrils brushing her thighs. To the girl’s detriment, all of this loveliness from the neck up rested upon a framework almost short enough to be comical. Short enough to conjure words like “runt” and “shrimp” and “pipsqueak” in Vriska’s brain. Assessed clinically, however, the complete package of the Peixes girl was not unappealing.  
  
And yet Vriska was disappointed. Thoroughly postmodern and skeptical down to the bones, she liked to think she was immune to hype in all its myriad forms, but in the last twenty-four hours she had subconsciously developed expectations for the only child of Condesce Peixes.

Perhaps it was inevitable.  
  
Yesterday, Vriska had watched through the peephole in her bedroom door as a pair of Peixes employees—identifiable by their fuscia and black uniforms—carted up furnishings and decorations. At first she had only watched out of boredom, but as the two adults set about the meticulous work of preparing a bedroom for their young heiress, Vriska became genuinely curious. Though she couldn’t hear what they said to each other, it was clear from their blithe expressions that they loved their work. It wasn’t just another job to them. They’d brought a selection of different bed linens and curtains and lamps and they took their time comparing the choices side-by-side, discussing the aesthetic merits of each, and deliberating on which to use. Vriska was bemused at their fanatical attention to such trivial details, but even more so at their doglike devotion to the girl who would occupy the room.  
  
She might have forgotten that scene and abandoned her curiosity if it weren’t for the fish. Ah, the fish. The fish arrived several hours after the decorators had left, in a plastic bag of water dangling from the hand of a sallow complected teenage boy. In his other hand he carried a crystal fishbowl. Vriska had been sprawled on the couch in the common room with headphones over her ears at the time and she watched him furtively. The boy had Buddy Holly glasses and wore a long, trailing scarf over an expensive-looking wool peacoat. He didn’t say a word or make eye contact with Vriska, just settled the fish in its bowl and left, his grim, dutiful expression never shifting. Vriska had felt an instant electrical spark of dislike for the boy, but the fish—and the strange, ceremonious delivery of it—revived her interest in Miss Peixes.  
  
The girl already had a pet and she hadn’t even moved in yet.  
  
Now, at last, the Fish Girl was here at her door, grinning like an idiot, and all Vriska felt was annoyance and the first tiny buds of a headache behind her eyes. What an anticlimactic reveal after all that fuss. There was nothing particularly regal about the girl, no air of nobility oozing from her pores to induce adoration in all who breathed it. Her aura was far more simplistic than that: cloyingly sweet, obnoxiously cute, aggressively overeager. She was, in the language of literary criticism, a flat character.  
  
“So you’re the new meat,” Vriska said, without a trace of warmth, hoping to discourage a lengthy conversation.  
  
“Y-yes,” said the Fish Girl. She stuttered, intimidated. “I’m Feferi Peixes. And you must be Terezi. This is embarrassing, but I-I’m afraid Aradia didn’t give me your last name.”  
  
It took just a split-second for Vriska to register the error and when she did a grin unfurled across her face like a banner. The situation had just gone from irritating to interesting. There was potential in this misunderstanding, oh yes, but its form was still clouded in Vriska’s mind’s eye. She would suss it out, though, and soon. For now, she would play along.  
  
“That’s right,” she said as she snatched Feferi’s hand and administered a vigorous shaking. “I’m Terezi Pyrope. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Feferi Peixes.”  
  
This confirmation appeared to stoke whatever internal flame backlit Feferi’s features and her smile brightened to a blistering level of cheeriness. “The pleasure is all mine!” she chirped. “I met Aradia earlier today and she spoke so highly of you!”  
  
Apparently this praise included no mention of the fact that Terezi Pyrope was a flat-chested redhead and also completely blind or Vriska would not have had the opportunity to carry out this farce. That was a surprising lapse in judgement from the indigent Brooklynite; Aradia was dirt poor but she was frighteningly smart, almost as smart as Vriska herself.  
  
“Oh yes, Aradia and I are dear friends,” Vriska lied, though it wasn’t a lie from the point of view of Terezi. “We go way back.” That part was more or less true for both her real and her fake identities.  
  
“You’re going to the party tonight, right?” Feferi asked.  
  
Hello, what was this? A party? Jackpot. This was it, the payout for her deception. “Yeah, I’ll put in an appearance,” she said easily—now that she knew what she was doing she wrapped the role around her like favorite bathrobe. “I have to wish my dear friend Aradia a Happy New Year after all.”  
  
“And don’t forget Carp-cat,” Feferi chimed. “Since he’s the one who invited you.”  
  
That nearly tripped Vriska up, not the comment so much as the teensy quirk of an eyebrow that came with it and infused the words with complex presumptive meaning. She, Vriska, didn’t have any feelings warmer than grudging tolerance for that sulky little orphanage leftbehind. But right now _she_ was Terezi, and Terezi’s relationship with Karkat Vantas was, by all observable behaviors, stuck somewhere in that wide woolly wilderness between friend and more-than-friend.  
  
“Of course I want to see that knucklehead,” Vriska said. It sounded sufficiently Terezi-ish, and the half-second of hesitation before she said it worked to her advantage, conveying the nuance of feelings she assumed Terezi had for Karkat. Since she didn’t know exactly how much Aradia had told Feferi about anybody, she had to act and react with caution.  
  
“Great!” said Feferi, pumping her round fists in front of her giddily. “We can go together and you can introduce me! Not just to him, to everyone! I want to meet the whole gang!”  
  
Vriska beamed back a well practiced smile while her brain reeled. She’d pegged Feferi as a perky airhead as soon as she laid eyes on her, but this was ridiculous. Was this girl for real? Was this sack of pink bubbles really the daughter of Condesce Peixes?  
  
Or...  
  
Was she a highly trained agent? A player in an elaborate prank orchestrated by Aradia Megido and her team of rag-tag misfits? The idea entered Vriska’s consciousness like a seed on a breeze but immediately it shot down roots and held fast. That had to be it. It was the only explanation that made any sense. Nobody was really this moony. No. This wasn’t Feferi Peixes. This was revenge. It was revenge for her alleged mistreatment of that pathetic Nitram kid, and for other perceived misconducts with even flimsier backing.  
  
But Vriska couldn’t spare even a nanosecond to seethe over the duplicity of it all. As soon as the epiphany occurred, she had to alter her tactic without a single ripple showing though on the surface. “Want to come in for a minute and check out my room?” she asked the girl posing as Feferi. If Aradia believed she could outwit Vriska Serket, she was downright delusional.  
  
“Reel-y?” the girl answered, over-pronouncing the word. “Wow! You’re so cool, Terezi!”  
  
With a sweeping hand gesture, Vriska welcomed the faux Feferi into her bedroom and then closed the door behind them. Had Aradia prepared her pawn for this? Vriska didn’t think so. No, the girl was a fly wandering heedlessly into the spider’s web.  
  
“So, what exactly did Aradia tell you about me?” Vriska asked coolly.  
  
Feferi was distracted, gazing about the bedroom and taking in the mess through saucer eyes. It was a controlled chaos—eight-sided gaming dice scattered on the desk, crude drawings of roleplay costume ideas tacked on the blue walls and crumpled on the floor, lumpen piles of comingled clean and dirty clothes, stacks of plates and bowls stuck together with the gummy, sour-smelling residues of meals long past. Home sweet home.  
  
“Feferi?” Vriska repeated.  
  
The girl snapped back to attention. “Oh, well, she actually didn’t have time to tell me much. I was on my way to meet the principal and I wanted to see where I would be staying, but my information was out of date and...”  
  
“You went to Beforus,” Vriska completed, hoping to speed the story along.  
  
“Right! But when Karkrab opened the door he yelled at me and sent me away. It wasn’t his fault, though! Please don’t think I’m mad at him! He thought I was sent there by Vriska Serket as a prank. It was Aradia who chased me down and told me about the other boarding house and that you were the person to know here. And she invited me to the party! Isn’t it great?”  
  
“Great? It’s fucking awesome,” Vriska said, masking a wave of anxiety. Her brain was racing to analyze everything the girl just said and fit it into the context of Aradia’s revenge plan. Karkat thought that she, Vriska, had sent Feferi to _them_ as a prank. Not really, though, because Karkat was in on the scheme, too. Anything he said to the girl was probably bullshit. No wait, if the girl was just a hired actress, her entire story was bullshit. But it was well scripted bullshit; the information it contained was sparse but specific and accurate. And this Feferi delivered the bullshit so earnestly and with such flawlessly performed emotion.  
  
The girl deserved an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. And Aradia for Best Original Screenplay. Yes, that was it. Had to be. Loath as she was to admit awe of anyone else’s talents, Vriska didn’t have a choice in this case; if she didn’t acknowledge that the team had serious skills in the scamming department she would have to acknowledge the possibility that there was no scam and that this bewildered mooncalf really was the Peixes heiress. And Vriska was not about to do that. Ah, but she still felt a tiny, sharp gnawing of anxiety, like a fire ant in her belly.  
  
Real or fake, Feferi continued to run her mouth, oblivious to the agitated considerations occurring within her hostess’ head. “I think my mom would flip her ship if she found out I went to a party in Brooklyn. Especially on the subway. But I’ll keep a low profile. I doubt anyone will recognize me. My last name may be famous, but my face is not. Still, please don’t tell anyone who might tell her. Or someone who might tell someone who might tell her. Or someone who might tell someone who might tell someone who might tell her.”  
  
Only one word had stood out in all that blather. “Brooklyn?” Vriska said, raising an eyebrow. Aradia _would_ ring in the New Year in that cesspool.  
  
“Yeah, it’s at some place in Bushwick called Quarts and Melodies. Have you ever been there, Terezi? Is it any good?”  
  
To her own surprise, Vriska _had_ been there, but only once. Quarts and Melodies was one of a slew of gimmicky establishments that had sprung up in middle class New York neighborhoods in the past several years. The gimmick at Quarts and Melodies was that the bar only sold beverages—sangria, wine coolers, sugary non-alcoholic cocktails, and a selection of beers—by the quart. It was also a dance club, hence the Melodies in the name. Vriska’s only visit had been at the behest of the real Terezi and had been underwhelming; the generic technopop music and the pitchers of watered-down booze she’d bought with her fake ID were not worth the trip. The dance room had been serviceable, however, with its three mezzanine levels.  
  
Like a flash of lightning, Vriska’s plan for the night came to her. Actress or heiress, Feferi was her ticket to sweet vengeance. Not just for this attempted hustle, whatever its ultimate objective was, but for every past incident of antagonism from Aradia and her ilk.  Yes, this would be sweet. She needed to prepare in private, though, and the fly she’d lost interest in devouring—for now at least—was still milling around her spiderweb.  
  
“Alright, Fef,” she said genially. “I can call you Fef, right? We both should probably start getting ready, put on our party clothes and whatnot. So...”  
  
“Oh my cod!” Feferi interrupted so boisterously that Vriska cringed. “Terezi, is that a photo of you with Spinneret Mindfang?”  
  
The photo in question—and Vriska didn’t have to look where Feferi was pointing to confirm which one—was of her and her mother. She hadn’t thought to conceal it before letting Feferi into the room, but now that it had been spotted, she realized that hiding it wasn’t necessary. Only the anointed few were privy to the fact that Spinneret Mindfang had formerly been named Ariadne Serket, and even fewer knew that she had a teenaged daughter. From Feferi’s point of view, it was just a photograph of the famous author—dressed in the unmistakable garish blue pirate garb she always wore for the portraits on her book’s jackets—and her young fan, Terezi Pyrope.  
  
“Yeah, I met her at a book signing,” Vriska said, which wasn’t exactly a lie. The photo was, in fact, taken at such an event, but Vriska hadn’t attended as a fan. Rather, she’d been called upon by her mother to pose as an intern and help manage the crowd. Vriska always had a knack for keeping people in line and her mother put that to good use. Now she gave Feferi a curious glance. “I take it you’re a fan?”  
  
“Shell yeah!” Feferi whooped. “She’s only the greatest romance novelist ever! Like Nora Roberts and Daniel Steel combined! But bigger!”  
  
Other teenagers might feel ashamed to have a mom who made her millions by writing what was, essentially, pornography, but Vriska didn’t. Vriska admired her mother fiercely and deeply. And why shouldn’t she? Spinneret Mindfang was brazen, outrageous. She did what she loved and was damn good at it. And—most importantly in Vriska’s opinion—she was proudly and defiantly independent. Vriska got a smug sense of satisfaction from knowing that her mother turned on more women than any man alive but needed no man herself. That was how Vriska wanted to live her own life, no attachments, no clinging to anybody.  
  
She had read almost all of her mother’s books, though in order to do so, she had to put her mind into a zen state in which it could divorce the brain that had written the graphic and sometimes disturbing sex scenes from the body that had given birth to her. Every once in a while, her zen would snap and the two women, writer and mother, would converge and she would have to bury whatever book she was reading under a pile of laundry in disgust until she regained her wits. But those instances were rare.  
  
They were excellent books, but she would not have expected a girl like Feferi to enjoy them.  
  
“Wow, Fef,” she said, with a half-smile of genuine amusement. “I never would have pegged you for a fan of kinky pirate sex.”  
  
Feferi’s cheeks stained crimson and she looked down sheepishly. “Well, I read them mostly for the plots. High seas adventures and swashbuckling and such. But, uh, my favorite is actually the first book she wrote, _Double Blind_. I think it may be her only non-historical romance.” Her eyes rose back to Vriska’s face, hopeful and imploring. “Have you read it?”  
  
That was an even more surprising twist. Vriska had worked enough book signings to have overheard every imaginable sort of gushing praise for her mother’s oeuvre, and she’d heard every individual title lauded as favorite at least once. All except for _Double Blind_. Feferi was the first person she’d met to acknowledge its existence. Was this part of Aradia’s revenge? Did Aradia even know about _Double Blind_? Vriska didn’t think so. This part was unscripted.  
  
“Not recently,” Vriska said, keeping any hint that she was impressed from her voice. “But I’ve read it, yes. I’m surprised to meet someone else who has. It’s been out of print for years.”  
  
There was a moment of silence as Feferi’s already cheerful face fully bloomed into an expression of irrepressible delight and her limbs contracted as if her whole body were a bowstring being drawn. Vriska knew in that moment that she had made a mistake. In answering this guileless girl, she had led her to believe that the two of them were connected over a shared treasure. Ordinarily, Vriska would have found it hilarious that she could so effortlessly toy with a stranger’s emotions, but when she looked at Feferi, the sense of found kinship sparkling in those big wet eyes just made her feel queasy. And now she was about to get an earful.  
  
“Oh isn’t it just the best? It’s a romance, but it is so much more! It has suspense and drama! And it’s so heartbreaking! The precocious college freshman recruited by an evil organization to seduce her professor and steal his research! The handsome young teacher trapped in a loveless marriage! And neither knows the other’s secret! I know they get to be together in the end, but every time I reread it, it puts my stomach in knots! But in a good way! I just _glub_ it!”  
  
This all came out in a long, fast, breathless stream, at the end of which Feferi sucked in a loud gulp of air.  
  
Vriska blinked several times as her brain chopped the information down to coherent sentences. Only one word failed to process. “Glub?”  
  
“Oh!” Feferi’s hands leapt to her mouth and she tittered behind them. “That... that’s just something dumb that me and my best friend made up when we were little. It’s stupid. I meant to say I _love_ the book. Sorry, when I get excited, sometimes I glub.”  
  
“Oh-kay...” Vriska was starting to wonder if this girl had some kind of manic psychological condition that Aradia was not aware of when she hired her.  
  
As if reading her mind, Feferi said, “I’m not crazy, I swear! Of course, that is exactly what a crazy person would say. Heh heh.” By the time she arrived at the chuckle, her voice, facial expression, body language had calmed to standard levels for casual human interaction. “It really is a shame that it’s out of print, though,” she sighed dreamily. “It could have so many more fans if it weren’t so hard to find.”  
  
“I heard there was some sort of legal issue right after it came out,” said Vriska. She’d heard it directly from the author, though her mother had only given her the simplified version. There was a copyright issue, or maybe it was a petty plagiarism complaint, and Mindfang had chosen to pull the title from stores and quash the evidence of it ever being written rather than alter its contents. “But, uh, you know that in real life, Evangeline never would have thrown the professor's research into the fire and given up the eighty million just for love. And he wouldn’t have left his wife.” She was surprised she remembered the plot so well, it really had been years since she read it.  
  
“You’re probably right, Terezi,” Feferi said wistfully, swaying on her narrow ankles. “But isn’t it nice to imagine there really is love like that? That you could meet someone amazing? A prince or a mage, who would fight for you and with you, against the world?”  
  
“Eh, sometimes,” Vriska said, feeling awkward by the question.  
  
Feferi flashed a white, toothy grin. “I guess that’s why we’re Spinneret Mindfang fans.”  
  
“I guess so,” Vriska agreed. As much as she loved to hear praise for her mother, she was well past ready to wrap this up and get this girl out of her room. “Now, as one Mindfang fan to another, I’m gonna have to ask you to let me get ready for the party.”  
  
“Oh right!” Feferi gasped. “I completely forgot, I just got so excited talking to you. Yes, we should both get ready. Then we can meet in the common room and ride the subway together. Sound good?”  
  
Vriska shot her a wink. “You got it, Fef.” She thought that would be the end of it, but Feferi, without warning, lunged forward and wrapped Vriska up in a crushing embrace. The girl was surprisingly strong and Vriska’s arms flailed akimbo, unsure of where to be, until she was released.  
  
Feferi pranced out the door nimbly as a doe, unperturbed by Vriska’s failure to hug back. Vriska closed the door and locked it. Her headache hadn’t stopped when Feferi entered, but somehow she’d managed to forget about it temporarily, as if all that ceaseless blabbering had drowned out the throbbing. Now she was awake again to the searing pulse behind her eyes. But she’d already wasted way too much time on that ditz, she couldn’t rest now. There was work to do.  
  
Swift as a spider, Vriska went to the enormous antique camel back trunk at the foot of her bed, her treasure chest. Hopefully, everything she needed was inside. She sank down onto her knees and pulled the brass key on its long chain out from inside her shirt, where she kept it against her skin at all times. Opening her treasure chest released a series of familiar, immensely satisfying sounds: the metallic clack of the lock unbolting, the quiet groan of the ungreased hinges, the heavy wooden thunk of the lid being hoisted. She felt like a pirate queen from one of her mom’s books every time.  
  
From a compartment in the upper tray, she fished out an opened package of multi-colored water balloons. She shook out what were left and counted them. Eight, her favorite number, and in this case, just the number she needed. She retrieved her funnel from another compartment and lifted the tray to access her stock of fillings. So many to choose from. Though she was short on time, she did have enough to give these decisions the consideration they deserved. After all, Aradia had obviously put a lot of thought into her phony Peixes.  
  
Vriska riffled through the selection bottles and jars purposefully. For Karkat, the King of Crabs: cocktail sauce. Catsup for the Cat Girl. Honey for the techie geek whose lisp was as annoying as bees buzzing. For the real Terezi: cherry cough syrup, a little medicine to treat her Poor Kid Fever. Vriska felt a twinge of reluctance when it came to choosing something for Kanaya, who was actually pretty cool for a scholarship kid. But she needed eight targets for eight balloons so she settled on plain old innocuous water. For Texan Tavros, by far the vilest of the lot, she chose molasses. Maybe he’d have to shave off the rest of his hair. That just left Aradia and the impostor. Fortunately, Vriska had a couple of special weapons she had been saving for an occasion such as this. Fish sauce, three years past expired and so heinous she had to keep it sealed in two ziplock bags, was perfect for the fake Fish Girl. And for the Mastermind herself, a bottle of scorching hot habanero sauce, the kind that makes your eyes burn just sniffing it.  
  
That ought to teach her not to fuck with Vriska Serket.

To be continued


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a while, but I wrote a new chapter. It's longer and more eventful than previous chapters, and I hope people will read it and like it. If anyone is reading this has read my Hetalia fic, Outcast, you might notice thematic similarities, more so in chapters still to come. I very much consider this fic to be the, uh, spiritual heir to that one. But they will be sufficiently different.
> 
> And if anyone is wondering why I made Feferi an art history nerd, I had two main reason. First, it provides a lot of fun descriptive opportunities. Second, art history is a very "soft" subject, one that would suit a sheltered rich girl but also one that goes very against her mother's values.

 

 

**Chapter 4**

  
The subway train to Brooklyn was packed sardine can tight, so it didn’t even matter that Feferi was too short to reach the handhold overhead because the press of warm bodies on every side of her kept her in place. She wished she could see over to the corner where Terezi had wedged herself, but the view was blocked by the tall, square shoulder of a gentleman whose coat reeked of tobacco. There were so many things she would have liked to ask Terezi, about Aradia and Karkat and Vriska, about which Spinneret Mindfang books she’d read, and—if Feferi could think of a not-too-nosy way to broach the subject—about the New Year’s surprise Terezi had prepared for her friends.  
  
It really was impossible not to be curious. When Feferi had met back up with Terezi in the girls’ common room, Terezi had not changed out of her jeans and flannel or styled her hair or put on any makeup, which made Feferi feel suddenly awkward in her pink Betsy Johnson dress and clutching her jewel-encrusted purse shaped like a clam. Had she gotten the wrong idea about what kind of party this was? But Terezi had smiled at her and said, “Nice threads,” assuaging Fef’s fears, and followed that quickly with an explanation. “I would’ve dressed up fancy, but I decided to whip up a New Year’s surprise for the gang and I ran out of time. But, eh, it’s the way life goes sometimes.” That was when Fef noticed a large backpack, bulging lumpily with its contents, on the floor by Terezi’s feet.  
  
“What sort of surprise is it?” Feferi asked eagerly, to which Terezi responded by leaning in and flashing her sharp grin.  
  
“The kind that wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you about it, sweet cheeks.” There was a faint touch of poison in her tone, which Feferi took to be a dissuasive tactic—most likely—and not an indication of actual malevolence.  
  
So Feferi hadn’t inquired further during the walk to the subway station or the wait on the platform. The moment their train arrived, Terezi, wearing the backpack backwards—that is to say, frontwards—over her belly, had ferreted her way to a corner where her special surprise would not be squashed or jabbed by elbows. And Fef had been jostled in the opposite direction until she’d finally lodged behind the man with the smokey coat and been unable to move since. At every stop it seemed like more travelers got on than got off, on their ways to parties and dates, to the people with whom they would welcome the New Year.  
  
Now, with nobody to talk to and no room to fish out her phone from her purse, Feferi had only her own thoughts to entertain her and stave off claustrophobia. These thoughts started off as dreamy speculation about the people she would meet tonight and hopefully become friends with over the coming weeks, but as the train rattled onward through its dark tube, Feferi found herself dwelling on the schoolmate just meters away.  
  
There was something odd about Terezi’s behavior, not sinister exactly, but she had a trenchant edge to her that was almost defensive, like she wanted to reveal as little about herself as possible. Even her facial expressions had a chiseled, too-tight quality to them. The only time during their interactions that Terezi had displayed an unambiguously natural reaction had been when Feferi brought up Double Blind. Learning that Terezi liked that book had relieved a lot of the discomfiture Feferi felt at first around her. Nobody who liked that book, who knew that book, could be all that bad. But still, she was a strange one, that Terezi.  
  
Feferi was disappointed that she had not been able to meet Terezi’s sister Latula before they’d left. It felt somewhat irresponsible to head off to a party without checking in with the adult in charge first. But when she’d asked Terezi about it, Terezi had assured her that Latula was “out with her spastic imbecile of a boyfriend,” and would not be back tonight or probably even tomorrow. Feferi had no sisters of her own—even if Meenah was almost as close as one—but she figured that it was not uncommon for sisters to affectionately deride each other’s lovers. Terezi’s statement, however, was not wholly affectionate, there was a seed of real dislike in there and it made Feferi wonder if there was some tension between the Pyrope sister’s over the matter of this boyfriend.  
  
And of course, Feferi continues to ponder the contents of Terezi’s backpack. Party poppers? Noisemakers? Funny hats? None of those ideas fit with the Terezi she had met, but then, she really didn’t know the girl at all.  
  
By the time the train arrived in Brooklyn, the crowd had thinned out enough that Feferi didn’t have to fight her way to the exit. She rejoined Terezi on the platform and together they rode up the escalator to the street where they emerged into the icy night air on a lamplit street in Bushwick. And even though it was the coldest part of Winter, Feferi felt like Persephone rising out of bleak Hades and into a bright, fecund world of possibility. New Year, New School, New Friends. As they walked the three blocks to the club, she was too excited to ask Terezi any of the questions she’d been aching to ask on the train, too afraid it would break the spell of perfect anticipation.  
  
The frontage of _Quarts & Melodies_ was unprepossessing, a windowless wall of neat brown bricks with a recessed doorway and the name written above in magma red neon piping. There was a modest queue snaking out the door and kept in order by a rope, but the note Aradia had left on Feferi’s phone included instructions for getting inside without a wait. Terezi, of course, would know the procedure already, but Feferi felt a flush of pride at being allowed to participate in this intimate gathering of friends and wanted to put Aradia’s trust in her to use.  
  
“I’ll talk to the bouncer,” she said to Terezi, who had shifted her burden to her back and whose eyes were darting askance.  
  
“That’s cool,” Terezi said absently.  
  
Fef approached the bouncer at the doorway, a tall and sinuous man wearing a black suit and a black tie with a diamond shaped tiepin, and flashed him the smile she always wore to her mother’s parties. “Excuse me, Mister, uh, Bouncer. Me and my friend here are with Aradia Megido’s party.” He narrowed his beetle black eyes on her and she gulped and continued. “The password is, uh, corpse party.”  
  
The bouncer’s mouth thinned and for a moment he said nothing, causing Fef’s skin to prickle with anxiety. Had she said it wrong somehow? “What friend?” the bouncer asked in a low, raspy voice.  
  
“Oh, my friend is Tere...” She’d begun speaking as she turned to indicate her companion, but discovered in mid-sentence that she was alone. “...zi,” she finished softly, confused. “Well, she was right here with me a second ago. She must have dashed off for a snack or... or something. But she knows the password, too, so I guess I can go in without her.”  
  
“Alright,” the bouncer grumbled. “You don’t look twenty-one to me so I’m going to assume you aren’t drinking tonight.”  
  
She was still looking around for Terezi but she answered. “No, I’m not. And I’m not.”  
  
“Then I’ve got to stamp you.” As the bouncer said this, he grabbed hold of Feferi’s wrist and smashed a rubber stamp hard on the back of her hand. “In you go then.”  
  
Feferi made one more sweeping search of the street for any sign of Terezi before turning, with a sigh, and passing through the door. She had to remind herself that she was the outsider in this social circle so there was no basis for her to worry over Terezi’s sudden disappearance. For all that Fef knew, she did things like this all the time. And Terezi did have the password, so yes, it was definitely stupid to fret for the girl.  
  
Once she was inside the club, it was hard to worry anyways. The interior of _Quarts & Melodies_ was as vibrant and alive as the exterior was stark. Ornate chandeliers dripping with crystals hung from the ceiling and scattered prisms across the monkey-puzzle tiled floor. Bar tables and barstools gleamed chrome and lucite and red vinyl. All around the room, revelers drank and talked and laughed, their voices blending with the clinks of glass on glass and the subsonic rumble of the bass leaking in from the dance room.  
  
Since she wasn’t buying any quarts—and the glow-in-the-dark hand stamp that said NO ALCOHOL ensured that she couldn’t—Feferi checked her coat with the attendant and headed towards the melodies. Pushing through the swinging double doors, she entered a realm of color and sound even more wondrous thant the one she’d just left. The dance room opened around her like Hagia Sophia or the Pantheon; its physical dimensions appeared impossible to have fit behind the club’s brick facade, like an M.C. Escher-esque paradox space. The center of the room was an atrium, open all the way up to a lofty, invisible ceiling where enormous globes beamed down columns of light in ever-changing hues. Around the periphery of the room rose three mezzanine levels, all of them, like the main floor, crowded with dancers. Music pulsed like a living, breathing thing and the air was suffused with the ripe, fruity odors of perfume and sangria and moving bodies.  
  
It was all so intoxicating, so different from any place Feferi had been to before. But how was she going to find Aradia in the midst of all this? She started wending her way through the shifting labyrinth of dancers, trying not to bump into anyone but learning quickly that minor collisions were inevitable and that nobody cared.  
  
“Ah, Feferi! You made it!” a voice called out from somewhere close enough to be heard over the music.  
  
Feferi turned towards it and found Aradia waving her over to a less populated spot near the wall. “I made it,” she said, grinning excitedly as she arrived on the scene. “Thank you so, so much for inviting me!”  
  
Aradia looked just as lovely as Feferi remembered—lovelier—in a crimson blouse with a plunging v-neck and a long black crepe de chine skirt. Her dark curls were a storm cloud around her shoulders. “It’s the least I could do to make up for Karkat’s unbelievable rudeness today,” she said then quickly reconsidered. “Well, truth be told, it is absolutely believable. But I also admit that I wanted to get my hands on you before Vriska did. Say, did you happen to encounter her when you got settled into Alternia House?”  
  
“Haven’t met her yet,” Feferi said, shaking her head. “But I met Terezi. You’re right, she’s really cool! In fact, she came with me on the subway, but... Well, she sort of disappeared when we got here and now I don’t know where she is.”  
  
Aradia smirked knowingly. “Oh, she’s probably just looking for Karkat so she can torment the poor devil.”  
  
“Ah, gotcha!” Feferi said. She felt like she was, bit-by-bit, being fed the stories of this group of kids and she reveled in it, hungered for more. And suddenly she realized that there were already other members of the group present she just hadn’t noticed because they were strangers to her.  
  
Clustered together with Aradia were two girls and a boy.  
  
“I believe some introductions are in order,” Aradia said. “These are Kanaya Maryam, Nepeta Leijon, and Tavros Nitram, all scholarship students at Sgrub and fellow residents of Beforus Hall. And this,” she said to her housemates, “is the new girl at the _other_ house, Miss Feferi Peixes.”  
  
The three looked at her with vaguely pensive expressions, but said nothing, as if they didn’t know what was the appropriate reaction. Was it her name or the fact that she was staying in Aternia? Feferi felt uncertain, too. She wanted them to accept her, as Aradia had, but she couldn’t predict if they would. And the way Aradia had said “ _other_ house” and had added a formal Miss to her name made Feferi question if she could ever really be a part of their group.  
  
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” she said and curtsied the way she used to for her mother’s business associates. Maybe that was a mistake, though, and would only make her seem more different.  
  
“Well aren’t you the fish out of water,” said one of the girls, Kanaya, but she said it in a playful tone with a smile on her face. There was an elegant, cultured quality to both her voice and her appearance. With her willowy build and luminous ivory skin, she could have stepped right off of a Gustave Klimt canvas. If she weren’t wearing a poppy red miniskirt. And if the same color weren’t artificially striped through her flawlessly coifed black hair.  
  
“I guess I kind of am,” Feferi admitted. “I mean, I’ve never been to a place like this before. But I love it! It’s just so... exciting!” Just saying the word sent a fresh surge of the emotion through her.  
  
“I know, right?” said Nepeta, pawing her fists in the air. She was a compact, wiry girl with a round, kittenish face, large green eyes, and a fringe of strawberry blonde hair sticking out from under a blue fleece cap. “So are you really a Peixes? Like, really really?”  
  
Feferi giggled. “I really, _reel_ -y am! I hope you wont hold that against me. I’d like it very much if we could be friends.”  
  
Kanaya gave her a warm, approving smile. “Well, my dear, nobody can choose who her family is. So long as you are good hearted, I see no reason why you cannot be our friend.”  
  
“And Peixes means fish!” Nepeta piped. “And fish-uhz are delish-uhz!”  
  
Relief washed over Feferi. She couldn’t have asked for a warmer welcome. Oh, but there was still the boy, Tavros. He sat in a wheelchair, hands worrying the hem of his t-shirt, face brown and uncertain. There was a pubescent awkwardness about him: the way he kept his shoulders drawn as if he weren’t accustomed to their breadth yet; the way he’d sheared his short hair into the tidiest mohawk it could support, an unobtrusive effort at self-expression. He looked at Fef with apprehension from under a furrowed brow.  
  
“I hope you’ll be my friend, too,” she said, ever hopeful.  
  
He answered in a faltering tenor. “I... I guess I’ll consider it... But, I’m gonna be cautious, okay? Nothing personal, but I’ve trusted the... the wrong sorts of people in the past and I’m not... I’m not going to let myself get burned again...”  
  
Once again, Fef got the sense of an impenetrable history that was shared by these friends. Like the tension between Terezi and her sister, and Karkat’s innate suspicion of Vriska Serket, and hadn’t Aradia mentioned something earlier about a stalker? It was like observing an iceberg from the deck of a ship; Feferi could see the frosty white peak above the water, but all she could make out below were faint blue-green outlines that melded together with the blue-green sea.  
  
“That’s good enough for me,” she told Tavros. It was not a bad starting point, really, as far as winning his trust went.  
  
Aradia joined her hands together in front of her chest, a simple pleased gesture, but to Fef it felt symbolic and significant.  
  
“So are we going to wait for the rest of the party or shall we dance?” Kanaya asked.  
  
“Well, Terezi came with Feferi and quickly vanished,” said Aradia. “So I think it is safe to assume that she met up with Karkat and that they will find us in their own time. And Sollux...” A ghost of regret passed over her face. “I don’t think he’s coming tonight.”  
  
“Then what’re we waiting for?” Nepeta asked eagerly. “Let’s dance! Feferi, come dance with me! I have a feeling we’ll make an awesome team! Fefeta for the win!”  
  
Before Feferi could even respond to her request, Nepeta had her by both hands and was tugging her out onto the floor. Feferi cast an approval-seeking glance to Aradia, who beamed her the go-ahead, and then she was dancing.  
  
The only dances Fef knew were orderly ballroom styles, like the waltz and the foxtrot, a few simple steps repeated over and over and over without variation. But this, this was freestyle, and not like in swimming where freestyle had its set of prescribed rules; this was actually and truly freestyle. At first she just swayed her hips and jived her shoulders, looking around to what other dancers were doing, but when Nepeta shouted, between fanciful leaps, “You gotta move more than that, Miss Fishy!” Feferi let go of her inhibition and gave her body over to the music. After all, there was no wrong way to do it, right?  
  
The sustained kinetic activity of so many warmblooded creatures churned the atmosphere of the room into a hothouse, but that didn’t deter anyone from dancing. Feferi imagined the heavy air was water and the music was ripples passing through it, fluttering her limbs. If her version of dancing looked strange, nobody seemed to care. Fef didn’t care. She was having too much fun with everyone. Aradia twirled as smoothly as a gyroscope, her skirt belling out like an inverted black lily. Nepeta bounced and swooped with such elan that it didn’t matter she wasn’t moving in time with the music. And Kanaya certainly knew how to shake her bottom. Even Tavros, who had made such a timid first impression, was out on the floor, whirling his chair around, rocking back, throwing his arms in the air. No sightings of Terezi or Karkat, but that didn’t mean they weren’t around. With all the flashing lights and so many people in circulation, separation was inevitable. They would all meet back up before midnight—Feferi hadn’t been told this, but she knew.  
  
Feferi kept up her momentum through a chain of seven or eight upbeat songs, but when a slow, aching ballad began to play and she finally stopped moving, she found herself dry in the throat and dripping sweat everywhere else. This would be a good time to get a drink, she realized, and wove her way around the swaying couples and back out to the bar.  
  
The bar side was still doing brisk business, but that was not surprising on New Year’s Eve. Feferi only managed to get a stool because another customer was just vacating it when she arrived. “One Coke, please,” she asked the bartender. “Oh, I mean, one quart of Coke, please. The real kind!”  
  
He gave her an odd look but said nothing as he filled an enormous quart-size tumbler for her. This was exciting, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had real Coca-Cola instead of Tab, which was stocked ubiquitously and exclusively in every fridge within Peixes Corporation. Greedily she glugged it down to the ice and then swiped the cold, wet glass across her hot forehead. It tasted so good and had no metallic aftertaste.  
  
“Thanks,” she said, hopping from the stool. From her purse she pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and she slid it over to the bartender. “Keep the change.” Then she hurried off to find the restroom because the slow song wouldn’t last much longer.  
  
The sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror made her gasp when she first saw it. Curlicues of hair, black with wet, clung around her glistening face. Thank goodness she’d worn waterproof mascara. The rest of her makeup—blush, eyeshadow, powder—had all sweated off. Her face, neck, shoulders, ever bit of exposed skin on her, was glazed with perspiration. She looked like a wet seal. What would her mother think if she saw her girl all sweaty and gross like this? Feferi grinned as she blotted her face with a tissue. She’d never felt so alive.  
  
She paused in the discreet hallway just outside the restrooms to check her phone. It was already 11:45. The time dancing had passed so easily. No new texts or missed calls, which was a relief because it meant none of the Peixes retinue was hounding her tonight. But she also felt the faintest twinge of sadness that impelled her to thumb a quick text message to Eridan wishing him a Happy New Year. He deserved more, but she couldn’t free him from his family obligations. Obligations she had somehow managed to escape.  
  
But who was she kidding? Eridan wouldn’t want to be here, at a club in Brooklyn, dancing to popular music with kids he considered commoners.  
  
Right as she was about to head back out to the dance room, Feferi heard voices nearby. This hall was probably the only quiet spot in all Quarts & Melodies so it made sense that people would have their private conversations here. Fef would have hurried on her way and left them to their conversation but she distinctly heard one of the voices—male—say the name Karkat. Not carpet. Not car keys. It was definitely Karkat, which was not exactly a common name. Seized by curiosity, she ducked back into the recessed entranceway to the restrooms and held her breath as she waited to hear more.  
  
The voice that responded—female—was familiar. It was Aradia. “Just be prepared for an excoriation when he finds out you came all the way out here and didn’t even stay long enough to talk to him. And he _will_ find out, Sollux, because I _will_ tell him.”  
  
Wasn’t Sollux the boy Aradia said wasn’t coming tonight? Feferi couldn’t resist, she had to sneak a peek. With utmost care to remain undetected, she peered around the corner in the direction of their voices. Sollux was angled away from her, but she got a good three-quarter back view. He was tall and lanky, with large hands and feet. His hair was honey-mustard blond and at some point was probably cut in a caesar style but had started to grow out unevenly so that messy little cowlicks stuck up in back. He wore torn jeans and mismatched canvas sneakers—one white and one black—and glasses of some sort, though Fef could only see the glint of the earpiece.  
  
She drew back into the shadow with the image of him imprinted in her mind.  
  
He let out a resigned sigh. “I know you will, Ara. But he’ll get over it.”  
  
“He’s barely seen you all of winter break,” Aradia answered. “You’ve been holed up in your room so much. He misses you.” She paused and said a little softer, “I miss you, too.”  
  
Feferi felt a fluttering inside her chest, delicate as the fins of a fantail goldfish. There it was again, the phantom outline of the submerged iceberg. What sort of relationship did Aradia have with Sollux? She knew she shouldn’t be listening in on this—eavesdropping definitely went against the doctrine of gracious, loyal, unflappable, and benevolent (or beautiful, according to her mother’s original version)—but she was transfixed.  
  
“I miss you guys, too, Ara, but you know what I’ve been working on,” Sollux said and Feferi identified for the first time a trace of a lisp in his voice that he tried to suppress. “I actually juth thopped by to tell you that my lateth lead fell through. I’m heading over to my dad’s place to see if I can find more records from the hospital. I swear there’s gotta be more that he’s hiding.”  
  
Aradia made a noise that was halfway between a pitying sigh and an exasperated groan. “Oh, Sollux. You know that I will always support you, no matter what, but it pains me to watch you torture yourself like this. It’s been over a year now, you need to let go. Even if some small part of you doesn’t truly believe it, you need to accept that what happened was an accident and get on with your life. He’s moved on. Your father and Latula have moved on. Why can’t you?”  
  
“You call dropping out of college to play babysitter to a bunch of high schoolers moving on? The only reason my dad was able to get on with his life is that he didn’t have one to begin with. They’re in deep denial. And Mituna can’t move on because he doesn’t remember.”  
  
Another sigh from Aradia. “If you do find something, will it even make you happy?”  
  
There was a long, agonizing pause before Sollux answered her question. “I don’t know, Ara. But I know I can’t thop until I know for certain. You would do the same. What if it happened your sithter? Would you really accept that it was juth an accident?”  
  
“Ha!” Aradia laughed tartly. “For all I know, something already has happened to my sister. For all I know, she’s dead in ditch somewhere. And if that’s the case, you’re right, I _don’t_ believe it was an accident, I believe she brought it upon herself with her reckless, idiotic lifestyle.” There was bitterness threaded through every word. And sadness.  
  
“Okay, not the beth comparison,” said Sollux. “But I am not ready to let go of this yet. I juth have a gut feeling, okay?”  
  
“Can I at least persuade you to take the rest of tonight off? Celebrate the New Year with us. And you haven’t met Feferi yet.”  
  
“Feferi Peixes?” Sollux replied and Feferi’s ears prickled at the sound of her name spoken in his voice.  
  
“That’s right,” said Aradia. “How did you know?”  
  
“Because I got an email from Old Scratch saying I’ve got to tutor her in calculus and thatithics when class is back in session.”  
  
Fef had already forgotten about her stultifying new course load and the need for a tutor, but this news definitely lessened her dread. Her tutor was going to a friend of Aradia’s.  
  
“Oh, don’t look so disgusted by the idea,” Aradia said. “Feferi is a delightful girl, a bit sheltered perhaps, but very outgoing and optimistic.”  
  
Feferi’s cheeks flushed.  
  
“An outgoing optimith,” Sollux said, his tone unmistakably sarcastic. “Sounds like juth the kind of person who’ll get along great with me.”  
  
Feferi cringed. Maybe this wasn’t good news after all.  
  
“Shut up, Sollux. You actually like cheerful people because they even out your moods. Admit it. You like me, after all.”  
  
“Yeah, Ara, because you’ve known me forever and can put up with my bullshit. Other happy people, like this Feferi, aren’t typically so patient with assholes. Face it, I have a repellant personality. Maybe if I juth act like myself, she’ll be so revolted she’ll ask for a different tutor and I’ll be off the hook.”  
  
There might have been more to this conversation but, to Feferi’s mixed relief, a trilling chirp interrupted.  
  
“That’s my phone alarm,” said Aradia. “I set it to go off when it was ten minutes until midnight so I could make sure to round up everyone. Will you come with me back to the dance room?”  
  
“Naw, I think I’m juth gonna head over to my dad’s. I don’t want to get tangled up with introductions. Besides, the first minute of the New Year is no different from the other five-hundred twenty-five thousand, five-hundred and ninety-nine.”  
  
“You are the antithesis of fun, Sollux Captor,” Aradia chided. “Do you know that? But I’ve learned by now it is useless to cajole you, so please just be safe on your way. And say hello to your father from me.”  
  
“I will, Aradia. And, uh, Happy New Year all the same.”  
  
Feferi waited until she heard both sets of footsteps disappear and then headed for the dance room herself. It was remarkably lucky that nobody had come to use the bathroom and found her eavesdropping—which made her realize that there must be multiple facilities in the club—but not getting caught didn’t alleviate the sting of guilt. Now she knew that Sollux was going to miss spending New Year’s Eve with his friends just to avoid having to meet her and she couldn’t un-know it. Oh carp! She should have just stuck to GLUB. When she met back up with everyone, though, she couldn’t let on that she knew anything. She had to play it cool.  
  
Aradia and company were back in the spot where Feferi had first found them and now Karkat was among them, presently engaged in a shoving argument with an unidentified red-haired girl.  
  
“Hey everyone!” Fef greeted in a cheery voice, hoping it didn’t sound forced. “I just stepped out for a Coke. I can’t believe it’s almost midnight!”  
  
“You’ve returned just in time,” said Aradia. “And look who finally decided to join us. Karkat, I believe you have something to say to Feferi?”  
  
At the invocation of his name, Karkat stopped tussling with the cute redhead—though she got in a few more playful whacks at him—and stepped forward. His mouth was screwed up in a stubborn scowl and his gray eyes roamed up and down, looking at everything but Feferi’s face. He addressed her in a low, grumbly voice. “Look lady, I don’t do apologies, but I am pretty sure you know that I wasn’t intentionally being an asshole earlier today. You gotta understand that our friend Vriska can be a real sneaky bitchweasel, so you really can’t blame me for being suspicious.”  
  
Aradia interrupted with a loud “Eh-hem!”  
  
Karkat got the message. “Okay, I guess you can blame me, but I really hope you won’t because it’s not like it’s going to happen again. I’m actually not some inveterate SOB who gets his jollies by pissing on other people’s feelings. And I would have told you all of this earlier but _somebody_ ,” he glared in the direction of his nameless companion, “has been forcing me watch YouTube videos of some insufferable douchewad named Dave Strider all evening. So if anyone owes you an apology, really, it’s Terezi.”  
  
His speech was fast and gruff and overlaid on the sounds of the music and the crowd, but there was no mistaking what he’d said. A lump swelled in Feferi’s throat and her tongue felt like it had been transformed into a dead sea slug. She managed to form words, but her voice came out squeaky and dolphin-like. “You’re... Terezi Pyrope?”  
  
“That’s me,” said Karkat’s friend, grinning toothily. “And you must be the newbie. Nice to meet you.”  
  
This Terezi Pyrope was shorter than the one Feferi had previously met, with cinnamon red hair cropped to her shoulders. She wore a gender-neutral jeans and t-shirt combo over her flat, flapperish body and sported a pair of cherry-tinted glasses on the freckled bridge of her nose. Clutched in her hands was a long white cane capped with a decorative dragon’s head, on which she leaned insouciantly. She was so natural, so unaffected, and Feferi knew, with a collapsing sickness in her belly, that she was the real Terezi.  
  
“Nice try,” Kanaya chortled. “But Feferi already told us that you’ve met each other properly, so I’m afraid you won’t be able to squeeze a lark out of this one.” Kanaya thought it was a joke they were trying to pull; it didn’t even occur to her that the heiress to the Peixes empire could be so effortlessly duped. So utterly daft.  
  
Feferi was panicking on the inside and hoping it didn’t show on the outside. Her lungs quavered with the effort it took not to hyperventilate. If this girl was the real Terezi Pyrope, who the heck had Feferi brought with her? She knew, of course, from the pit of her stomach she knew the horrible mistake she’d made. And now it was all going to come out and her new friends were going to hate her. Thinking about that made her heart ache prematurely. How could she even break the news?  
  
“I...” she began, but the words stalled even though her jaw kept working. And then everything spurted out very quickly, like water from an unkinked hose. “I’ve made a huge mistake I have to go find Vriska Serket right now because I accidentally brought her with me when she claimed she was Terezi Pyrope and I think she might be up to something because she had this huge backpack with her and I feel like a total squidhead and I understand if you don’t want to be my friends now but I am going to find her and stop now and I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so so so sorry!”  
  
In an instant she was running, moving through the crowd like an eel through a coral reef, scouring the dense pack for any sign of the party crasher. She heard voices calling after her from the Sgrub cluster, but she didn’t stop to listen or look back; she couldn’t face them until she fixed her mistake. The houselights, already dim, darkened further, throwing the chasing colored beams into brilliant contrast. Feferi figured it must be an indication of the imminent countdown to midnight, but it only made her search more daunting as the dance room was now awash in shifting, disorienting watercolor radiance.  
  
A twinge in her belly—that gut instinct they always talk about in books—drove her upwards. She lost one of her pink ballet flats on the stairs, somewhere between the ground floor and the first mezzanine, and by the time she reached the second she’d kicked off the other because the asymmetry was slowing her down. That was right about when she heard the first shout.  
  
“Ah! Something hit me! Ew sick, it’s sticky! It’s... it’s in my eyes!” The voice belonged to the boy in the wheelchair, Tavros Nitram, and soon a whole choir of yelling and shrieking joined him.  
  
Feferi was at the topmost mezzanine now. Her legs were short but thank goodness swimming had made them strong. There weren’t many people up here so it didn’t take long for her to see that Vriska was not among them, but just as she was about to dash back down—cursing her dreadfully misguided gut instinct—she spotted a metal ladder tucked into a shadow. In a passing flash of light, Fef read the sign next to it: LIGHTING ACCESS AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. She didn’t even know Vriska Serket but she knew a sign like that would not dissuade Vriska Serket.  
  
Up she went, into the catwalk with its industrial mesh flooring and vertiginous view. And there was Vriska, leaning against the guardrail and cackling with laughter, her unzipped backpack slumped against her ankle.  
  
“Now that’s what I call a fucking bullseye!” she roared. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out what looked like a water balloon and dangled it out in empty space.  
  
“Freeze right there, Vriska Serket!” Feferi shouted.  
  
Vriska turned to Feferi without any sense of shock or urgency. She didn’t drop her water balloon but she didn’t withdraw it either. A look of uncontainable hilarity was stretched over her face. “You finally figured it out!” she said almost proudly. “I’ve got one for you, too, of course. Don’t think I would ignore you just because you’re new. I really wish you would’ve waited for it, but since you already ruined the surprise...” She pulled her hand back in and bent down to exchange the balloon for another in her pack.  
  
Feferi sprinted and pounced, her strong swimmer’s legs granting her considerable propulsion. She landed on Vriska’s back with her arms latched over Vriska’s shoulders and her legs hooked around Vriska’s waist. They were really grappling now: Fef’s sweat slick hands groping for the water balloon, Vriska stabbing backward with her elbows to wrench Fef from her back, all the while staggering in the narrow space of the catwalk. The guardrail pressed hard against the small of Feferi’s back, giving her enough leverage to lunge a little further over Vriska’s shoulders, just enough to final pry the slippery balloon free from its cage of spidery fingers.  
  
Success! A feeling of triumph surged up Feferi’s spine and fluttered in her stomach.  
  
No. It was shifting equilibrium. She was tilting backwards. A lattice of beams and bars filled her vision and she realized, with sheer terror, that she was staring at the ceiling. Hands fumbled around her ankles—a rescue attempt by Vriska—but it was too late, she was going over. She tried to scream but the falling motion of her body tore the air right from her lungs. The ceiling rushed away from her, lights stretching to ribbons and she waited for inevitable impact and certain death.  
  
And then, just a moment of a moment before inevitable impact and certain death, something snagged her wrist. Her body’s momentum continued but the hands cuffing her held tight. Wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints all pulled and popped painfully, but she was tethered securely.  
  
“Whatever you do, don’t panic,” a voice called to her. “Juth try to get your other hand up to me if you can.”  
  
Feferi’s eyes traveled from the hands that held her, up the long arms, to the tensed face of Sollux Captor. He was straining over the railing of one of the mezzanine levels, though Fef couldn’t tell which one from her vantage point. His glasses, which she now saw were a pair of 3-D throwbacks with the red and blue lenses, were sliding down his thin nose.  
  
“I’ll try,” she replied. Her heart was whumping like a water hammer in her chest but she had to be brave. Sollux couldn’t hold onto her indefinitely.  
  
“I won’t let you go,” he said. “I promise.” And even though they were just words to keep her calm, Feferi believed him from a place deep inside her.  
  
She flung her dangling arm upwards as he released one of his hands from around her wrist to catch it. Their fingers brushed, but the contact was too brief to achieve purchase and Feferi swung like a pendulum. Her insides became a bowl of quivering jell-o and she was all too aware of the lubricating sheath of sweat between Sollux’s skin and her own. But he’d promised not to let her go. She swung again and this time their hands latched. Now she had dual anchorage, but when she looked up at Sollux, she saw how far he was leaning over the railing, teetering on his stomach. For half a second, Fef thought that he would go over and they’d both plummet to their mutual doom, but reinforcements arrived just in time. Kanaya and Nepeta flanked Sollux, each taking hold of one of his arms, and together the three of them reeled in the catch of the day.  
  
As soon as she was over the railing, Feferi collapsed, her limbs gone floppy as the adrenaline ebbed from from her muscles. She’d toppled Sollux Captor and landed atop his chest though she wasn’t aware she’d done so until her brain was calmed enough to register that she was panting into his t-shirt. With a gasp of embarrassment she bolted upright, knees still straddling his hips.  
  
“Sorry!” she squeaked.  
  
He was prostrate beneath her, arms splayed at his sides, sweaty blond hair rucked up in a wild spray. His glasses were notched between his nose and upper lip, just barely spared from falling off. By now someone must have noticed the ensuing chaos because the houselights had been turned back up, not all the way, but enough for Feferi to see Sollux’s face clearly. His features were neat and narrow—just a tiny bit elfish—and very symmetrical, except for the eyes. One was a bright, clean blue and the other as brown as a hazelnut and he blinked them dazedly at her.  
  
“You just saved my life,” Feferi said because it was the only thing she could think to say and because it needed to be acknowledged above anything else.  
  
“Juth a coincidence,” he replied in a self-deprecating tone, his mismatched eyes studying her face in a curious, almost clinical manor. “I was in the right place at the right time.”  
  
Fef gawped at him in disbelief. She would have died if he hadn’t caught her. Was it really just a joke to him? Or maybe—she paused to consider this before she spoke any sharp words—he was just trying to be modest. “Well,” she told him politely. “Whether it was a coincidence or an intentional act of heroism, I still owe you my life. Thank you. Thank you so very much.”  
  
“Uh, okay,” he said, outwardly unmoved by her gratitude. “Say, if you really want to thank me, do you think maybe you could thop cutting off the circulation to my legs?”  
  
“Ah! Sorry!” she said for a second time as she sprang up to her feet. She promptly offered him her hand and he stared at it briefly, like he’d forgotten how the next step went in this scenario, before grasping it and pulling himself to a stooped stand.  
  
“Sollux Captor,” he said, not smiling at her but not frowning either.  
  
Feferi was relieved that he’d said his name before she accidentally let out that she already knew it from her eavesdropping. “Fe...” She’d only spoken the first syllable of her name when she became acutely aware that they were surrounded. Young people who’d been dancing frenetically just minutes ago were now loitering in the vicinity, a loose affiliation of idle gawkers trying their best not to appear as idle gawkers. It was only a matter of time before someone from security or management arrived at the scene and Fef couldn’t have her name attached to any sort of incident, especially an incident that occurred in Brooklyn.  
  
“I’ve got to get out of here!” Feferi piped urgently. “If my mother finds out...” She didn’t have to complete the thought for Kanaya to understand the predicament and rush over, herding Feferi and Sollux away with outstretched arms.  
  
“Go out through the service exit—you know where it is, Sollux—and wait at the loading dock,” she told them in a calm whisper. “The rest of us will meet you there.”  
  
“Uh, Kanaya?” Sollux said, an opening for further inquiry.  
  
“There will be time for explanations later,” said Kanaya. “Now go. Nepeta and I will handle things here.”  
  
Feferi couldn’t fathom how they would explain everything that had happened here, but her chest overflowed with gratitude at their unquestioning bid to help her. Sollux’s hand was still linked with hers—he hadn’t let it go after she’d pulleyed him to his feet—and he tugged her briskly through the dance room of _Quarts & Melodies_, staying as close to the walls and as far from the crowd as possible. They turned down a dim, echoey hall, sprinted a few meters, and then turned again, and again, and finally passed through a door that led out to the frozen night.  
  
The cold hit Feferi the way the water hit her when she accidentally bellyflopped off the high-diving board, a full-body slap. Her jacket was still checked inside, of course, but she was also barefoot and drenched with sweat, which chilled her even faster. Why did she have to pick a sleeveless dress tonight? She lwrapped her arms around her body tightly and chafed them with her hands.  
  
The loading bay was really just an alley with some dumpsters and enough space for a truck to park and unload crates of booze or whatever, definitely not the sort of place Feferi felt safe and comfortable. But at least she wasn’t alone. They were standing at the top of a three-step landing, huddled beneath the weak parabola of light cast by a single lamp.  
  
“I hope everyone makes it out okay,” she said through chattering teeth. “And soon,” she added as a gust of wind needled her across the face.  
  
“Here,” said Sollux, shrugging his bony shoulders out of the zip-up hoodie he was wearing. He thrust it towards Fef without ceremony. “It’s kind of shitty for keeping warm but it’s better than nothing.”  
  
“Thank you,” she said, sliding her arms into the sleeves. It was goldenrod yellow and way too big for her, and, as Sollux had cautioned, too thin to provide much insulation. But it still held onto a trace of his body heat, and also his scent, salt and caramel with just a hint of fabric softener. It was a pleasant scent. “I guess we’re into the New Year now. I’m sorry I made you miss it,” she said, the third time she’d apologized to this boy she’d only just met.  
  
“Meh, welcoming the New Year isn’t such a big deal to me,” he said with an indifferent shrug. “Actually, I find it  downright thupid. So there’s no need for you to say sorry for that. But I wouldn’t mind knowing why we had to flee like rats from a ship.”  
  
Right on cue, something scratched noisily from behind the dumpsters and Feferi tried to ignore it as she answered. “It’s my mom. She’s a little, uh, controlling. I’d be in serious trouble if my she found out I fell from the ceiling of a dance club. I can’t even imagine what she would do to me.”  
  
Sollux quirked an eyebrow. “Do to you? Wouldn’t she juth be glad that you didn’t, you know, splatter all over the floor?”  
  
Fef chuckled. “Not my mom. She’d likely have the whole place bulldozed to the ground and turned into a reform school, which she would then make me attend.”  
  
“Uh...” Sollux didn’t have a ready response to that.  
  
“My mother is Condesce Peixes,” she said as explanation. “And I’m Feferi Peixes.”  
  
A flash of surprise passed over Sollux’s face. He knew the name, after all, but how could he have anticipated meeting its owner under such bizarre circumstances? “Feferi Peixes, eh?” he said and the edges of his lips pulled up almost imperceptibly. “This is probably a weird time to bring it up, but I’m going to be your math tutor.” He said it like a simple, immutable fact. Maybe he wouldn’t try to get out of it after all.  
  
Feferi wanted to say something in response, something witty and clever about being spared an awkward introduction when school started up again, but the beat of shoes on concrete stole her attention. All the others had arrived, even Vriska, though she appeared to be held captive between Aradia and the real Terezi. The three of them were a mess, brown and red stains congealing on their clothes and clumping in their hair. And then, when they got closer, the smell hit Feferi’s nostrils, a potpourri of every sort of foulness imaginable: rotten, fishy, ammoniated, sour, acrid. She pulled the collar of Sollux’s hoodie over her nose.  
  
“You’ll have to forgive the smell,” said Terezi, who was grinning despite the fact that she was obviously fighting a gag reflex. “Trust me, it’s even worse for me. Heightened senses and all.”  
  
Aradia sighed dramatically. “We managed to apprehend Ms. Serket, but not without becoming saturated in her arsenal.”  
  
“You know I never go down without a fight,” Vriska said smugly.  
  
Terezi laughed. “You got it as good as we did, Vris. Yargh! You smell like shark puke!”  
  
“It was worth it,” Vriska snorted. “And at least I got Goth Girl and Wimpy Wheels. Heh, I can’t believe how easy it was to trick Little Miss Saucer Eyes over there.”  
  
“Shut up, Vriska,” Aradia growled. “You tricked her, she found you, you accidentally almost killed her, Sollux saved her, and we caught you. Can’t we call that a night and go home?”  
  
There was a distended silence as Vriska and Aradia glared at each other with simmering rage and everyone else pensively watched. Terezi edged closer to Karkat, who grimaced at the stench before matching her wary expression. Kanaya chewed her lip, holding back words of indeterminable nature, and put a hand on Tavros’ shoulder. Fef clenched her bare toes on the cold cement beneath them, bracing for a fight. She felt Sollux’s elbow bump against her.  
  
Something had to break the tension, but nobody expected it to be Nepeta.  
  
“Hey Fef-furry! I got your shoesies!” she shouted, brandishing the pink flats like sparklers over her head.  
  
All the intense gazes redirected to Nepeta and softened when they beheld her beaming face. Feferi couldn’t help herself and started laughing. Not giggles or chortles, but great big belly laughs that made her bend forward, clutching her sides—well, that part was also partially for warmth. She’d never had such an adventure before. And soon they were all laughing, even Karkat and Sollux.  
  
“Alright people,” Karkat said when all the guffawing finally subsided. “Let’s get our asses back home.”  
  
“Where showers and fresh clothes await,” Aradia added.  
  
—  
  
The subway ride back into Manhattan was definitely less cramped than the ride out had been, not because there were fewer riders, but because the moment the doors opened at each stop, the stench from inside wafted out and prompted potential passengers to wait for the next one. So the Sgrub kids had an entire car to themselves, and while Fef couldn’t pretend that the smell was pleasant, it wasn’t enough to ruin her mood. And even though she suspected that her brain was blocking out some of the psychological trauma of her freefall and that it would probably come to haunt her later, right now she felt safe and happy. She felt like one of the gang.  
  
“So are you guys going to turn in Vriska?” she asked Nepeta, who was seated next to her. “Will she be expelled?”  
  
Nepeta spit-laughed as if the question were ridiculous. “Pfft! Of course not. This sort of stuff happens all the time. Especially between those three. They’re what you call frenemies. Kinda friends. Kinda enemies. Of course, there’s more of the enemy part between Aradia and Vriska, but neither would try to get the other kicked out of school.”  
  
“I see,” said Feferi.  
  
This group just kept getting more and more fascinating. But right now it was Sollux Captor she was most curious about. He was her hero tonight. Throughout the ride everyone talked and laughed and Fef contributed when she could, and every time she got the chance, she stole a surreptitious glance at Sollux.  Calculus and statistics were certainly looking better.  
  
The crisp Upper West Side air came as an indescribable relief from the miasma that inevitably filled their subway car. It was such a relief, in fact, that Feferi’s nose didn’t detect something off about it until they’d already been walking for a block. And she wasn’t the only one.  
  
“Do you guys smell smoke?” Terezi said. “Not hotdog smoke or barbecue smoke or any other kind of food smoke, but fire smoke?”  
  
“It’s New Year’s Day, dummy,” Karkat said. “People are setting off fireworks and firecrackers and making trashcan bonfires and all kinds of idiotic finger-mutilating shit.”  
  
Terezi sniffed again, loudly. “It’s not fireworks smoke either,” she said, but nobody acted particularly interested in her observation as they continued walking.  
  
Since Feferi was tired, she figured the others must be, too. Fortunately, it was just a few more blocks to Alternia and Beforus. As they drew closer, however, the smell of smoke got stronger. Much stronger. And then Fef saw the lights, wildly strobing red and yellow, and something even brighter behind it. And she heard the sirens screaming into the night like the wails of banshees.  
  
She started running at the same time everyone else did, powered by whatever energy was left from the quart of Coca-Cola she’d guzzled. They all made it to the row across from Alternia House, but that was as close as they could get. The street was barricaded and clogged with firetrucks and police cars.  
  
“Fef, thank god you’re safe!” a voice shouted. It was Eridan’s voice. What was Eridan doing here?  
  
But she couldn’t move her mouth to speak. She couldn’t move her eyes to look at him. A hand gripped hers, squeezing so tightly it hurt, and she knew that it was Aradia’s and that they were both staring at the same thing.  
  
Pendants of white flame licked out of every window, like forked tongues of demons, devouring everything, razing Beforus Hall to the ground.

To be continued

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this far. The end of chapter 4 is where I originally wanted to end chapter 1, which explains why I worried the first three chapter didn't move the story along fast enough.
> 
> The next chapter will be from Aradia's POV.


End file.
